It’s Black Friday here in the US, so what better day to re-post my video tutorial on How to Shop for Fabric when sewing doll clothes?

As you know, I’ve been posting free printable doll clothes PDF sewing patterns and linking to old tutorial videos so you can make this 18″ doll’s clothing ensemble, which makes a fantastic Christmas gift for any little girl who owns an 18 inch doll:

But how did I decide on which fabrics work well together, when building a wardrobe like this?

In today’s video tutorial, you’ll see some of the methods I use when shopping for doll clothes fabric, but the most important thing to do when choosing fabrics that work well together is this: lay the fabrics out side-by-side and “eyeball” their colors before you begin to cut.

In the image I posted at the end of last week, you can see that I was doing this. All my fabrics were laid out on my daughter’s bed, and I was placing one swatch of fabric next to another to get a feel for whether or not the colors would coordinate well. Here’s that image again for your convenience:

If you just stumbled across this website at random, you might be interested to learn that ChellyWood.com offers free printable sewing patterns and tutorial videos for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and sizes. Navigate over to the gallery page (Home button) to see how you can download free sewing patterns for dolls.

My free doll clothes sewing patterns are available through “Creative Commons Attribution.” This means that I created my patterns (and therefore I own rights to them), but I’m willing to share them with everyone who will tell people about my website.

Here are some helpful ways to tell the world about my patterns and share my video tutorials:

• You can pin them on Pinterest.
• You can share them on Facebook.
• You can tweet about them.
• Use any other form of social media that appeals to you!

Are you new to sewing? I’ve got a playlist of tutorials for the beginning sewists on my YouTube channel. It includes video tutorials showing you how to do a basic straight stitch when sewing by hand, how to use the whipstitch to hem a garment, how to sew on snaps, and even how to design your own doll clothes patterns, for those who are new to design and alterations.

Because I use dolls as animated characters in many of my videos, I’ve had to mark my videos “for kids” as per the new COPPA laws. Because of this, access to my playlists may soon disappear, so please take advantage of these helpful playlists while they’re still available to you.

And remember: share, share, SHARE my videos. Every view on YouTube = a penny in my pocket, and that keeps this website running!