Doll Clothing

For Christmas this year, my daughters are getting Melissa and Doug dolls. They're 14" tall and perfect for my little girls.

 

 I knew I wanted to make doll clothes for them, I however didn't realize that the bug would hit me and I couldn't stop making them. I had to tell myself to quit after 3 outfits because I have plenty of time to make more after the holidays. 

The first outfit I made was these cute crochet dresses. I found the pattern here. I changed the dress a bit and joined a lot earlier than she did. I wanted my girl's to be able to just slip it on and not have to deal with buttons. Because the dolls are 4" smaller than what the pattern was made for I dropped down 2 hook sizes and used a lighter weight yarn. I love the sparkly yarn.

I found the top of the next outfit from the same creator as the dress above. It's an adorable sweater, however I did make some changes , joining sooner than she had and I used the same worsted weight yarn, but dropped down 2 hook sizes. On the 2nd sweater( one on the left) I didn't do the increases she calls for towards the bottom of the sweater. I think that did the trick for getting the correct size. The pants I used this pattern and tutorial. I shrunk down the pattern to fit the dolls and used knit instead of fleece. This pattern was super easy and I plan on making a lot more pants in all different types of material.

You cant live in the West and not have a western outfit. I used this great pattern for the top. I've used it many times and its super easy and fast. I did make the straps a bit shorter so it would hug their dolls better. For the skirt I used jersey and the same principals in this tutorial I've used before.

This is what the back looks like.

That's it for NOW, oh but there definitely will be more clothing to come.

Girl Halloween Skirts

 
I'm not a big fan of matchy matchy when it comes to dressing my girls, however when I saw this material at the thrift store I had to get it and wanted to make  Halloween skirts with it. To make them different I decided to try new to me sewing techniques, such as layering, piping, and bias tape. I used the same tutorial for the skirt that I did a few weeks back. I really like how simplistic it is. The difficulty came w/ the edge work. I had never done ruffles before. I tried several different pins and lets just say I didn't accomplish the end goal. I however found this tutorial here and was finally successful in making a ruffle. WOOHOO!!! I like how the first skirt turned out. 


For the 2nd skirt I knew I wanted to make it a layered skirt which is shown on the same tutorial as the first skirt. She had bias tape on each layer and I loved the look of it. By chance I found the elastic band and yellow bias tape at the thrift store too. I decided to try this tutorial here for sewing the bias tape on. It was nice and easy and because I went slow I didn't have to pin it ahead of time. I dislike pinning!!!


The best part of this project was the cost. For $3 in supplies at the thrift store I have two very cute skirts. I have enough material left over that I could make more skirts, I have two baby nieces that would look adorable in similar skirts.

A Simple Skirt

I often dream about making clothes for my kids. The problem...I can only sew straight lines, my sewing skills are limited and I wont kid myself...I'm scared I'll make a mistake I cannot fix. I found this great tutorial here which catered to my limited sewing abilities. All I had to do was sew straight lines. I don't have a serger and forced myself to learn how to do a proper hem, which takes some time, patience, and practice. Yesterday I had the time, the patience I can always develop and boy did I get practice with these cute skirts. The 2nd skirt of course went a lot faster than my 1st one. I love this pattern so much that I'm going to be picking up more fabric to make several more. Of course they wont be matchy matchy, my youngest daughter did request a different print yesterday, but the material was the perfect size to make two skirts.