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In my store (found under the “Shop” button in the main menu on my website), you can now purchase clasps, buttons, Velcro, and more. Today’s blog post details each of these items.

Let’s start with clasps.

I bought the overalls clasps shown in the palm of my hand above, from a store called I Sew for Doll on Etsy. They have quite a few tiny items that you can’t buy anywhere else!

But before you buy clasps for your tiny dolls’ overalls, you might want to read this blog post about purchasing products that have been imported from China. It’s important to be an informed buyer, and that blog post dips into the dark political history of China while explaining my reasons for including links to stores like I Sew for Doll.

Feel free to leave your own comments on that blog post. It’s good to get different opinions on matters pertaining to global concerns around products made for sewists like you and me.

These tiny overalls clasps are super small but incredibly detailed, as you can see in the image above. There are also overalls clasps for bigger dolls’ overalls on Etsy, and I offer recommendations in my store, for different clasps, for various doll sizes.

The littlest clasps are for dolls that are 10 inches tall or smaller.

Okay. Let’s move on to buttons.

Buttons come in various shapes and sizes on Etsy, and I recommend buying buttons that are 3 mm in diameter or smaller for dolls that are Barbie sized or smaller.

The bigger button size in the palm of my hand below, is a 6 mm in diameter button. These work great for Wellie Wishers, American Girl, and other 13 inch to 18 inch dolls; however they’re more for show than for functionality.

These are often available at craft stores and fabric stores, like JoAnn’s.

The teeny-tiny 3 mm buttons (shown below in little tiny zipper pouch baggies) are a little harder to find, but they can be found on Etsy and a few other places online.

These tiny buttons are definitely more for decoration than an actual closure device, although the 6 mm buttons can be used with a loop made of embroidery floss.

Here’s one of those embroidery floss closures I made for Curvy Barbie, although the 6 mm buttons do look a little clunky on a Barbie-sized doll, to be honest:

If you’d like to see the video where I teach you how to make those cloth-covered buttons with embroidery floss loops, click here.

But as I’ve said, most people who sew doll clothes will use buttons to embellish, rather than as a closure. For the two vintage Skipper shirts shown below, I have used size 4/0 Dritz snaps to close the shirts, but colorful 3 mm buttons appear on the outside of the shirt for a more realistic look.

Because they’re usually just an embellishment, rather than an actual closure device, my links to places where you can buy tiny miniature buttons for your dolls’ clothes will appear on both the “closures” page, in my store, and the embellishments page.

Now let’s talk about Velcro.

You want to look for “Sew On” Velcro, with the actual Velcro label, like you see in the image above. I’ve made the mistake of purchasing other brands, and lived to regret it.

And another thing, the actual Velcro company does make little stick-on Velcro squares for crafting (see image below), but I do NOT recommend using these for doll clothes closures. These stick-on Velcro squares are designed for other materials besides cotton fabric, not for sewing.

I have been known to scavenge hook-and-loop products from garments I’m recycling, from time to time, but be advised that when you do so, you do run the risk of possibly using a less-high quality of product than brand-name Velcro products.

However, recycling garments and other fabric products is good for the environment, and I have been able to use generic hook-and-loop products that were appropriated from garments or cloth products, with some success in my doll clothing sewing projects.

In the image below, Figure A shows an actual Velcro brand product. It’s certainly colorful, and the strip opens and closes with little effort.

The white hook-and-loop closure product shown in the image above (Figure B) was originally used to seal a cloth sack that some cotton bedsheets came in.

Once the bedsheets were out of the packaging, I turned the cloth sack into the white shirt shown on my Anna doll below, and the hook-and-loop closure that I scavenged from the cloth sack became the shirt’s closure. It may or may not have been an actual Velcro brand product, but it works fine!

You may not be aware that Velcro comes in a variety of colors and is easily trimmed down to the sizes you need, when creating closures for your doll clothes.

Have a look at the image below. All of these bits and pieces came from a skein of Velcro like the black sew-on Velcro that appears in the upper right-hand corner of the photo.

The royal blue strip on the left hand side is what these bits and pieces looked like before I cut them down to fit the back closure of various doll shirts and dresses.

I have one caveat, though, and it’s an important one! Don’t use your sewing scissors to cut the sew-on Velcro strips into smaller bits and pieces. Instead, use craft scissors.

And now let’s end with a quick chat about Zippers.

The zippers in the image are lying on a cutting mat that’s 5 inches wide by 8 inches long. (Sorry the cutting mat is upside down!) For those of you living outside the US, 5 inches is 12.7 cm or 127 mm.

But when you look closely at the zippers, the zippy part is only about 3 inches long. These are classified as three-inch zippers, not 4 and 3/4 inch zippers! You don’t count the extensions that hang over the top and down at the bottom.

So when ordering zippers for your doll clothes, pay attention to how much actual zip space you need, and place your order accordingly.

Well, that’s all I have on closures at this time, although my store‘s “Closures” page will include additional goodies, like hook-and-eye closures, miniature belt buckles, and toggle clasps, which are great for closing a doll’s cape!

If I missed any other types of closures, please leave a suggestion in the comments section. I’ll gladly add those notions as well, if I’ve forgotten something.

At a later date, I’ll do a blog post on ribbons, which can also be used as a closure, but which will be listed under embellishments instead, in my store.

One last bit of advice about buying closures on Etsy for making doll clothes…

If an Etsy store doesn’t post measurements, do not buy their products! (It’s a red flag when they don’t post sizes; these merchants are average Joes who don’t know anything about the products they’re selling.)

If you have any questions about the products I use in my doll sewing tutorials, on my website, and on my YouTube channel, feel free to submit a question of your own. And if you have some advice to share, please leave it in the comments below.