When I’m sewing for a doll as tiny as the 6.5-inch American Girl doll, I always feel like it’s a shame to buy a full yard of fabric for such a tiny little doll.

Sure, I can use fat quarters from JoAnn’s Fabrics and Crafts, but sometimes you want to get a selection of jersey fabrics that all match. That can get expensive!

So here’s a way to invest in a series of matching jersey fabrics that won’t leave you broke after buying yard-sized swatches of fabric: buy underwear packs at your local Family Dollar store and use them for cutting out doll clothes patterns!

You’ll notice that all five of the undergarments in the pack use matching colors. The pink stripe matches the pink solids; the blue in the printed underwear matches the navy blue of the solid underwear; etc…

So for this week’s sewing project, I’m actually going to show you how to use the elastic that’s already in a pair of underpants to make a pair of dolly underpants:

See how I’ve laid the top of the doll underwear pattern directly over the top of the elastic, incorporating the human underpants’ elastic into the dolly underpants? This will be a real time-saver for your doll-clothes-underwear-sewing project!

Take a look at the “All Stars” screenprinting on the underpants. You can actually use that screenprinted image to create a T-shirt for your doll:

The elastic in the underpants can also be incorporated into dolly socks, as you can see in the image below:

So we’ve got a lot of fun sewing adventures in store this week, but before you embark on a doll-underwear sewing adventure with me, you might want to visit your local Family Dollar to buy some inexpensive undies for the up-coming project!

You can use them to mix-and-match your dolly wardrobe at a fraction of the price you’d pay for yards of jersey fabric! I paid about $5 for five pairs of undies, and look at how cute this pair of shorts and tee shirt turned out:

The same shorts go great with a navy blue tee shirt that I made using the navy underpants as jersey fabric:

 

How cute is that?!

So I’m really looking forward to sharing this week’s free patterns with you tomorrow, and my tutorial for making the 6-inch doll underpants on Thursday. Come back to ChellyWood.com for more sewing adventures!

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