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1. How to make a Peter Pan Collar
3. How to make a reversible/lined dress
5. Playing with fabric and scale
6. Making a bodice with a gathered skirt
10. A simple trick for patch pockets
At the moment I have made pattern pieces for Phoebe, American Girl doll size and 16" Waldorf.
Pattern pieces are free. Fill out the form for all pieces to date and to all new receive links, tutorials and pattern pieces.
Pleats are classic. And used in a doll dress they can be classic cute.
They are also simple. There are also variations on the pleat theme. One pleat in the center, two pleats on the side, pleats in the front and back, lots of pleats...
This first tutorial is for a simple center pleat.
At the end of the email, I have included a form for requesting the pattern for this, which includes the bodice and skirt with a center pleat.
Start with making the bodice, which is made like the beginning of the reversible dress or dress with a bodice.
But do not sew up the side seams!
Next cut out the skirt. Mark the top and bottom of the skirt pleat basting line with a tiny cut (less than 1/8 of an inch)
Do not cut the pleat line, just make small snips at either end to mark it, or mark the ends with pencil.
Next you will make the center front pleat.
1. Fold the front skirt piece in half, with the right side in the fold, or wrong side out. Lightly iron.
2 and 3. Use very large basting stitches to stitch from the nick and the top of the skirt to the nick at the bottom.
4. Your skirt should look like this.
Click to enlarge
Next you want to iron the pleat and "set" it. or get it to stay. Use steam and the cotton setting. Press pleat from the back side as shown. Flip over, press some more.
When you feel like your pleat is stable, you can take out the basting stitches. Leave a few at the top to hold the pleat together while you stitch it to the bodice.
The last few steps will seem familiar.
1. Finish center edges of the skirt back pieces.
2. Sew skirt front and backs to their appropriate bodice pieces.
3. Press
4. Sew side seams and hem.
Click to enlarge.
I added some bias trim along the waist seam.
I have finished drawing the Phoebe pattern in Illustrator. I hope to have the other two done by the end of the weekend. Form for requesting the patterns is below.
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There are a lot of easy ways to change up a doll dress. This trick can be used in a number of sewing situations, but I'll start with showing you how on the reversible dress. After you see how easy it is, you may want to try it with sleeves or a collar.
You will see this is an excellent way to use scraps of fabric.
Start with two pieces of fabric that you like together.
Sew the two pieces length wise. Your goal is to create a piece of fabric large enough to cut the outside of the reversible dress pattern from.
Once you've sen them together, you may want to add trim, but you don't have to.
Sew trim along the seam you just created.
Then lay your pattern out on your piece of fabric and cut.
Next cut a lining and proceed to make the reversible dress. As I mentioned earlier this can be done with sleeves or a collar too.
Although varying the fabric on our doll dresses, seems like an obvious thing to do. We don’t always think to REALLY vary the fabric. Push past any self imposed rules that you think about what a doll dress should be made of.
Try tweed, denim, corduroy….
A doll dress doesn’t take a lot of fabric. Especially a simple A-line dress with a Peter-Pan collar. It takes even less fabric, if you line it in white.
This gives a lot of room for play.
Play with scale. Don’t feel you have to stick with small scale fabric.
Play with solid vs pattern.
Use an expensive special fabric, like Liberty, after all you don’t need to use much.
Switch the collar fabric with the dress fabric.
There’s a lot of ways to be creative with just a simple dress.
With large scale, pay attention to centering of the design
Medium scale always works
Play with collar fabrics
Switch it up
Try something special, like Liberty or vintage
Most of all—Have fun!
A Ruffler Foot
A ruffler is a foot for your sewing machine. It does exactly that, it makes ruffles. And once you can get beyond how scary and complicated it looks, you will realize it makes ruffling rather easy.
The most difficult part about a ruffler foot is getting it clamped onto your machine.
1. Take whatever foot is on, off.
2. Straddle your needle clamp (the large screwish thing to the right of your needle) with the fork arm of the ruffler (the C)
3. Then clamp the back part of the foot the same way you attach all presser feet.
4. Check to see that your needle clears the needle hole.
With the ruffler you can make both pleated and gathered ruffles.
The texture of the fabric will affect the fullness of the ruffle. I have only used quilting cotton and have not experimented with other fabrics. But it works well with quilting cotton.
Stitch length can also affect fullness. A shorter stitch means more ruffles, or fullness. As you can see, whatever you choose, it makes that evenly and consistently.
An example of nice even ruffles from a Ruffler Foot
There are two adjustments that can be made on the ruffler:
The adjusting lever sets for ruffles/gathers or pleats. Slot 1 is for gathers, slot 6 and 12 are for pleats. 6 makes pleats 6 stitches apart. 12 for 12 stitches apart.
The Adjuster lever for pleats or gathers
The adjusting indicator regulates how full or deep each pleat or ruffle is. 8 is the deepest) gives only a slight gather.
The adjusting indicator for fullness or depth
The diagram below shows how to place your fabric in the ruffler.
How to place your fabric
Once it’s in. Just sew and watch the ruffles appear. Watch:
A ruffler does not come with the sewing machine but you can buy one for most sewing machines. They are sold at sewing machine stores and on eBay. The average ruffler costs about $20-$25.
4 different ways to gather a ruffle. From Phoebeandegg.com/blog
Two things right off the bat. One, there are probably more than 4 ways to make ruffled trim, the kind like I have on the skirt above. And two, there is a reason I did not call the blog post "How to gather" fabric. Although most of these methods involve a form of gathering, three of the four methods I would only use on decorative elements, because you cannot control the length and degree of the gathering on the finished product.
That's okay if you are making trim.
one inch strips
My ruffled trim is made from strips of cotton print, one inch wide and 45" long, cut with the rotary cutter, by merely slicing of the end of a fabric piece, one inch at a time.
I'll cover one way in each post. This post is all about the gathering foot. I think this is by far the easiest way to make this trim. You'll see why in the video.
The gathering foot shown below is the one from Bernina, #16. But most brands make one, Janome, Brother, Singer, etc.. They all look the same. Once and awhile it is called a shirring foot. They seem to cost between $20-$22.
The gathering foot.
To use this foot, you will need to set your stitch length to the longest stitch. If you want less gathering, shorten the stitch a bit.
Place your fabric under the foot, do a stitch or two backwards to secure and then just zoom right ahead, gathering/ruffling as you go.
How to use a gathering foot to make ruffled trim
And in about a minute or two you have your trim! I love this foot!
Finished trim
Doll Dressmaking Series: Ruffle Sleeves
I have the next sleeve tutorial for you already. There are a lot of ways you can treat sleeves, so i thought I'd keep throwing stuff at you. Along with the basic sleeve, covered in my last post, ruffle sleeves are super easy. They don't require a lot of careful fitting of the sleeve cap to the armhole, which is the trickiest part of sewing sleeves on a small scale.
For this I used the pattern pieces for Dress with a Bodice and Gathered Skirt:
Doll Dressmaking Series: Ruffle Sleeves
1. Sew front to back pieces together at the shoulder seams for both the bodice and the lining.
Doll Dressmaking Series: Ruffle Sleeves
2. Sew bodices together starting at the bottom corner of the back, up and around the neck and down the other side of the back. DO NOT sew the armholes together as you would for a sleeveless dress with a lined bodice.
Doll Dressmaking Series: Ruffle Sleeves
3. Fold sleeve ruffles in half and press.
4. Sew two rows of gathering stitches along the curved edge of each sleeve. Gathering stitches are explained in this lesson.
Doll Dressmaking Series: Ruffle Sleeves
5. Pull gathering threads until sleeve edge is the same length as armhole edge.
6. Pin sleeve to ONE layer of the bodice fabric making sure you have right sides together. The sleeve has two right sides, but the bodice only has one. If you look closely in the photo below, the lining of the bodice is lifted up.
7. Sew sleeve in place to the bodice but not the lining.
Doll Dressmaking Series: Ruffle Sleeves
Doll Dressmaking Series: Ruffle Sleeves
8. Now you can add the lining. Just flip it down and pin it in place. You will then have a bodice, sleeve, bodice lining, sandwich. You are ready to sew these three layers together. It helps to sew with the bodice side up, because you have the stitch line from sewing the sleeve to the bodice to follow.
Doll Dressmaking Series: Ruffle Sleeves
9. Next there is a tiny side seam.
A. Turn bodice right side out and press.
B. Locate the tiny side seams at the base of each armhole.
C. Pin the side seam of the bodice to the side seam of the armhole, matching the bases of the armholes.
D. Stitch.
Doll Dressmaking Series: Ruffle Sleeves
10. Press bodice and sew skirt on as in the Bodice and Gathered Skirt tutorial.
11. Hem and and trim and send pics!
Doll Dressmaking Series: Ruffle Sleeves
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Doll Dressmaking Series: An Easy Basic Sleeve
Includes free dress patterns
There are lots of styles of sleeves: puff sleeves, flutter sleeves, cap sap sleeves, wing, long sleeves, cuffed sleeves, bell sleeves, you get the point. A number of these sleeves work well for doll clothes. In other lessons I will cover kinds of sleeves, tweaking a sleeve, and sleeve construction, but in this post I thought I'd start with an easy sleeve.
There is a form at the end of the post, so you can request the sleeve pattern (or any of the patterns).
Most sleeves require some gathering, or easing (just the slightest of gathers), I designed this sleeve to not need even that step. So although I've broken the process down into micro-steps, this is really a three step sleeve--hem, insert, sew side seam.
Although the sleeve can be attached to either your basic reversible dress, the dress with facings or the dress with the gathered skirt, my instructions or for the Peter Pan collar dress or the Reversible Dress. The beginning instructions are similar, so refer to the Peter Pan collar dress lesson but the armhole instructions are different.
1. Make collar pieces as described in the Peter Pan collar instructions.
2. Sew shoulder seams of dress and lining.
3. Attach the collar pieces as in the Peter Pan collar dress instructions.
Sew armhole fabric and lining eges togther.
Next, you want to sew the lining fabric and the dress fabric together at the armhole edge. It is important that the wrong sides are together. I used a bright visible thread, which can be helpful for aligning the sleeve.
Hem sleeve. I also serged the edge, but I do that with almost everything, you do not need to do this.
Attaching the sleeve to the body of the dress:
1. Pin center of the sleeve to the shoulder seam, right sides together.
2. Pin the rest of the sleeve to the edge of the armhole. You will need to "help" the fabric along the curve.
3. Sew the sleeve to the body. On the lining side, you can see your bright thread, it can help to use this as your stitching guide.
Doll dress basic sleeve
Your sleeve and dress should now look a bit like the above photo.
Next sew the side seams. When you have added a sleeve you cannot sew them as you would in the reversible dress. the side seam will be visible inside the dress.
Hem. Add trim if you'd like.
Sew side seams.
Hem. I hemmed this dress with the machine.
Doll Dressmaking Series: Sleeves
Doll Dressmaking Series: Sleeves
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Pockets are often the perfect accent for kids and doll clothing. For kids, a lined patch pocket is easy, the lining makes for easy clean edges.
Doll pockets are too small to line easily. And machine hemming all the edges is tricky for such a small size rectangle.
My trick is to "line" the pockets with tulle.
Cut out two pockets. A rectangle that is 3x3.5 inches should work for Phoebe, Waldorf and American Girl Dolls. It will seem large but it will be smaller when it's done.
Tulle is sold in many crafts shops and online as a 6inch roll.
1. Place your two pockets right side up.
2. Cut a piece of tulle large to cover both pockets.
3. Lay tulle over both pockets and pin.
4. Stitch around the edges of each pocket, leaving an opening that is about an inch for turning right side out. A larger seam allowance is better for this. Just under a half inch is good.
5. Clip corners.
6. Turn right side out. Use something like a knitting needle to carefully poke out corners.
7. Iron flat. Iron with fabric side up, tulle cannot withstand direct heat.
8. Pin pockets to dress. Pocket placement is a personal preference. I placed these with a tiny bit going onto the back of the dress.
9. Sew the pockets. If a tiny bit of tulle shows anywhere, it is easy to snip off.
Click to enlarge.
Pockets are not so hard and maybe even fun.
