Do you see the folds in that little green skirt, in View 3 of my Simplicity 5861 doll clothes sewing pattern for Skipper dolls? Those are called pleats. Sometimes they’re referred to as “knife pleats.”

And for a doll that’s tiny, like vintage Skipper and modern Stacie (shown below), it can be especially tricky to get the pleats just right.

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Now let’s talk about how to make pleats!

As you can see in Figure 1, I cut my skirt a little wider than the pattern allows. That was a conscious choice on my part because of the lessons I’d learned with an earlier rendition of the skirt in green.

Figure 2 shows me marking the lines with a fabric pencil, and in my first attempt to make the pleated skirt from View 3 of Simplicity 5861, I really did try to follow the exact pattern. But honestly, that was a waste of time.

Both the green version of this skirt and the houndstooth version were epic fails, when I tried to use the markings on the pattern to make my pleats, as you’ll see when we get to Figure 7.

I really prefer a double-fold hem to a single-fold hem, but almost all small doll clothes patterns recommend a single-fold hem. And that’s all the Simplicity 5861 patterns allow for as well.

So when I cut my pattern out, I gave my skirt extra length as well as extra width for the green version, but after finishing the green version of the skirt, I decided it really looked too long. So when I made the brown houndstooth version, I cut it exactly the length of the pattern.

I liked the way that turned out much better. Have a look:

The brown version is only slightly shorter — maybe a 4 mm difference — but in tiny skirts, like the skirts you might make for vintage Skipper or modern Stacie, those four millimeters make a difference. At least, I think so anyway.

Now for this project, I hemmed the bottom of the skirt and one side of the skirt, but not the other side, as you can see in figures 5 and 6 above. When we get to the end of the pleat-making process, you’ll understand why you want to leave one of the sides un-hemmed.

Okay, so let’s move on to the tricks and tips for making these pleated skirts. What you’re trying to do when you mark and pin your pleats, is to avoid this problem:

The image in Figure 7 shows me measuring the skirt against the waistband. I had done what they suggested in the instruction booklet: using the pattern as a guide, I marked (with a fabric pencil) and pressed the pleats, and then I wisely laid my skirt against the waistband, to see if they matched.

They did not.

So then I pressed the fabric of the skirt to make it flat again and ignored the pencil lines I’d made. Plan B was now in full swing.

They’re actually called “knife pleats” because (at least, this is what my grandma told me) they actually used a butter knife to help measure the pleats and get the folds right. So I asked myself, “What object would be a good butter knife substitute for a Skipper-sized doll?”

In Figure 8 above, you can see that I tried both a Popsicle stick and a wooden coffee stir stick. The coffee stir stick (shown in Figure 10) worked the best.

I followed each of the following steps using the Popsicle stick first, but I discovered that the skirt was then too wide for the waistband. So then I had to un-pin all my pleats and start over with the wooden coffee stir stick.

So here’s what you do. Start working along the side of the skirt that has been hemmed (not the bottom, but the side). Note the hems in the photos above for clarity.

In Figure 11, I’ve folded the skirt fabric around the wooden stir stick. Then I’ve folded it back, making sure my folds are exactly one wooden stir stick’s width.

Figure 12 shows the folds from the wrong side, and just to be clear, I’m going to say it again: at this point, I was completely ignoring the blue pencil marks I’d made using the pattern’s guidelines because they were pretty much worthless.

Once I’d measured the width of my first pleat, using the stir stick, I withdrew the stir stick and, holding the pleat in place with my fingers, I then pinned the pleat in place against a cutting mat. Note: figures 13 and 14 below show me creating the second pleat, but the idea is basically the same for that first pleat.

I continued this process until I had a pinned pleats all along the skirt, to the unhemmed side.

When I pinned the last couple of pleats in place, I lay the skirt part of the garment alongside the waistband, just to see if I was close. I didn’t want them to match up exactly because I had already hemmed one side edge of the skirt, so as you can see in Figure 16 below, the waistband overlapped slightly, allowing room for me to hem the waistband at what would become the back closure.

In that same image, the un-hemmed back closure area needs to remain flush with the unhemmed waistband, so I can hem them during the finishing touches. In hindsight, though, it might have been better to have had an extra four millimeters of skirt there, so that my double-fold hem on that back closure area wasn’t so teeny-tiny.

In any case, I felt confident at this point that my skirt and waistband were close to fitting one another properly.

Next, with the straight pins still inserted in the skirt, I began to stitch from the edge of the top of the skirt to about 1.5 cm down the pleat, essentially making sure the pleat would stay in place during a child’s rough play. Figure 17 below shows these stitches in progress, from the wrong side of the skirt.

You may notice that I’m using two different colors of thread. I actually looked at which of the two colors of houndstooth print would be most prominent on the front of the skirt (figure 18) before choosing my thread, to make sure the threads would be relatively well camouflaged from the right side.

And as you can see in Figure 18, I removed the straight pin after I finished stitching the pleat in place.

Finally, when I’d removed all the straight pins, and I was certain it would fit the waistband nicely, I used a bit of spray starch and gave the pleats a good press before I began to attach the waistband.

On the left side of Figure 19 below, you can see what I mean about how narrow my back closure ended up being, when I finally hemmed it. That’s why I had wished I’d given myself another 4 mm to play with for that back closure hem where the snaps are shown.

And that’s it for my tips and tricks for making very tiny knife pleats for a vintage Skipper sized or modern Stacie doll sized pleated skirt, using Simplicity 5861 (view 3) patterns.

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*Please note: when you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include Amazon, JoAnn Fabric, Etsy, and the eBay Partner Network. As an Amazon affiliate, I earn from qualifying purchases. To learn more about how my website uses affiliate marketing, please visit the website’s Privacy Policy page.

Chelly Wood and the ChellyWood.com website are not affiliated with the pattern company or companies mentioned in this blog post, but Chelly finds inspiration in the doll clothes designed by these pattern companies. To purchase patterns from Simplicity, McCall’s, Butterick, Vogue, or other pattern companies shown and discussed in this blog post, please click on the links provided here. These links below the “Disclaimer” section do not help raise money for this free pattern website; they are only offered to give credit to the company that made these patterns.