Tips and tricks for beginners learning to sew: What if doll clothes don’t fit? @ ChellyWood.com #SewingTips #LearningToSew

The image shows a Mattel Skipper doll wearing a handmade dress of white fabric decorated with tiny pink and red hearts. The doll also wears pink flat shoes. She stands before a pretty turquoise blue background. The overlaid watermark tells you to visit ChellyWood.com for all your free printable sewing patterns for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.
Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable sewing patterns to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

The dress at the top of this post was supposed to have long sleeves. In fact, I was using my own “candy corn party dress” pattern, which you can see below, but the pattern didn’t fit!

Would you like to make this pretty party dress for your 10 inch doll like Skipper? Click the link in the caption to navigate to the page where you will be able to download that free printable pattern.
Please click on this link to download the FREE printable sewing pattern shown in the image: http://wp.me/p1LmCj-Fx0

So this is a little bit embarrassing! After I attached the cuff to the dress’s sleeve (see image below) and sewed up the sides, I tried the bodice on the doll only to discover that her hands were too wide to fit through the cuff!

This is one of a series of images of a dress bodice for a dress that fits 10 inch dolls like Skipper. In this image, we see an arrow pointing at the cuff that didn't fit the doll.
Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable sewing patterns to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

(Don’t worry. I plan to revise the “Candy Corn Party Dress” pattern and repost it later.)

So how did I revise my pattern? Well, I had already sewn the sleeves together, so I had to cut them and hem them without them being open. This can be a tricky feat.

In the image below, you can get a feel for where I cut the fabric of the sleeves (look at where the purple arrows point), but use your imagination to see — in your mind’s eye — that I was cutting the sleeves after they had already been sewn together:

This is one of a series of images of a dress bodice for a dress that fits 10 inch dolls like Skipper. In this image, we see arrows indicating where Chelly Wood cut the sleeves to shorten them.
Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable sewing patterns to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

So how does one sew sleeves that have been sewn, cut, and now need to be hemmed? The solution was Fray Check.

This is one of a series of images of a dress bodice for a dress that fits 10 inch dolls like Skipper. In this image, we see an arrow pointing at the edge of the newly cut sleeve to indicate where Fray Check was applied to prevent the fabric from fraying.
Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable sewing patterns to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

Fray Check is a type of adhesive (a sort of fabric glue) that keeps the edge of the fabric from fraying. So once I had glued the edges of the sleeves with Fray Check, I folded them back and did a quick and simple straight stitch to hold the fold in place.

What I’m not saying is this: once those tiny sleeves have been sewn along the inseam, it’s pretty close to impossible to make a double-fold hem with a whipstitch, without making the whole thing look lumpy!

But that wasn’t the end to my epic sewing fails last week. Unlike the candy corn party dress, I did not have any bias tape or ribbon to match this Valentine’s Day fabric. And on top of that, we were snowed in last week (and we have a very long driveway with drifting snow), so there was no way I was going to drive to town to buy ribbon or bias tape.

So how could I possibly create a hem?

I fudged and made a yoke.

This is one of a series of images of a dress bodice for a dress that fits 10 inch dolls like Skipper. In this image, Chelly's needle and thread are demonstrating how to attach a yoke to extend the back closure area.
Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable sewing patterns to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

A yoke is like a lining, but it follows the edges of the garment without lining it fully. I laid my garment down on a piece of old pattern paper and traced around the edges. The yoke didn’t fit perfectly, and as you can see in the next image, I had to cut it at the shoulders to make it fit right. But it did create enough of an extension to run a row of snaps down the back in a way that didn’t fit too tightly.

This is one of a series of images of a dress bodice for a dress that fits 10 inch dolls like Skipper. In this image, we see snaps running down the length of the yoke.
Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable sewing patterns to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

So in short, here are three tips for when a garment doesn’t fit your doll correctly:

  1. Cut it down (like cut pants into shorts or cut sleeves into shorter sleeves).
  2. Use Fray Check (this helps especially for hems that are too short).
  3. Create a yoke to extend the back closure area.

And those are my tips in a nutshell!

Sorry I didn’t get this Valentine’s Day Skipper dress project done in time for Valentine’s Day, but as you can see, I had a few SNAFUs along the way!

But hopefully when you read today’s blog post, you’ll take heart in knowing that even very experienced sewing “experts” have to start over with a sewing project now and then. 😳

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