Sewing hack: what to do when you don’t have enough fabric! #SewingHack #Fabric

The text shows a white arrow pointing at the View 1 dress from Simplicity 4883 doll clothes sewing patterns for Ideal Tammy dolls. The View 1 image shows the Tammy doll talking on an old fashioned rotary phone. She wears a sheath dress made of what looks like a small print floral cotton fabric. It's a sleeveless sheath dress with a ribbon tied at the waist and a ruffle at the bottom, at about knee-length. — Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable sewing patterns for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

Recently I made a denim version of the View 1 dress from my Simplicity 4883 sewing pattern for vintage Ideal Tammy dolls. I used a lightweight denim fabric that had a soft pastel floral print pattern on it, but there was a very SMALL amount of this fabric available.

It was really just three long thin strips of fabric, and that’s all.

So I had to make some alterations, in order to make it work. Today’s blog post will share my sewing hacks for making doll clothes with a limited amount of fabric, just like I did for this project.

View 1 of Simplicity 4883 for Ideal Tammy dolls is shown in close-up. The dress has a round collar and is sleeveless. It has a tie-belt that matches the white-orange-yellow floral fabric of the dress, and the ruffle also matches the white-orange-yellow floral fabric. It's noted that the ruffle is quite short. — Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable sewing patterns for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

But before we get underway, I need to make my required affiliate marketing statement…

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.

Figure 1 shows a section of the pattern instructions for Simplicity 4883's view 1 dress. The image on the pattern instruction booklet shows the ruffle after it has been folded in half and gathered with right sides out. The text in the pattern booklet or pattern instruction sheet states: Ruffle, step four. A. Fold ruffle in half, lengthwise, the wrong sides together, having raw edges even. Gather long raw edge between medium dots at centers back, as shown. To gather, make a row of machine stitching along seam line, using a long machine stitch. Figure two shows that the denim floral fabric is thinner and longer than the pattern for making the ruffle. The fabric swatch of pastel floral pale blue denim fabric looks to be about half as wide as the original pattern, maybe two to two and a half centimeters wide (being narrower at one end than at the other) and it extends off the pattern edge, and outside of the photo's range, along the cutting mat. — Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable sewing patterns for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

In Figure 1 above, you can see that the instruction page for Simplicity 4883 suggested that I cut out a ruffle for the dress and double the fabric, by folding it in half (like a hot dog) before gathering the ruffle along the raw edge.

Except, as you can see in Figure 2, I only had a long thin strip of the pastel floral denim fabric. I really wanted to see what this dress would look like in my floral denim though!

So I decided to take on the challenge of working with the tiny strips of fabric I did have, regardless of the fact that this would be tricky. And honestly, I wasn’t sure it was going to work when I first got started.

Figure three has a white arrow pointing to where the ruffle pattern lies on a strip of pink and white gingham fabric. The pink and white gingham extends about 3 to 4 centimeters beyond the edges of the ruffle pattern, making the cut ruffle much longer than the original pattern. In figure 3 the yellow arrow points to an image of the denim floral ruffle, which is equally as long as the pink gingham ruffle, but which is about half as wide as the pink gingham ruffle. Figure 4 shows a woman's fingers pulling back the pink gingham hemmed ruffle to expose the pale blue denim floral ruffle underneath, exposing the fact that it too has been hemmed. A needle and white thread shows along the raw edge of these two hemmed ruffles, attaching them with a basting stitch. The denim ruffle, once hemmed is about eleven or twelve millimeters wide, whereas the hemmed pink gingham ruffle is closer to four centimeters wide and also hemmed. — Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable sewing patterns for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

Tip #1 for working with a limited amount of fabric is this: use a secondary fabric.

In the image above, you can see that I decided to use a pink and white gingham as a secondary fabric. Of course the original pattern and its instruction sheet didn’t offer any instructions for using this secondary fabric, so I had to get creative.

In Figure 3 (above), you can see that I cut the gingham a little longer than the pattern called for (see the white arrow), and I cut the pink gingham as wide as the pattern but as long as the skinny swatch of denim (see the yellow arrow).

Then, as shown in Figure 4, I hemmed both ruffles, but the denim fabric only got a single-fold hem while the pink gingham got the usual double-fold hem. I gathered the two of them together along the raw, unhemmed long edge, as a pair.

View 5 shows the front pattern piece for dress view 1 from Simplicity 4883 (for Ideal Tammy dolls). The pattern piece has been pinned to a piece of thin floral denim, on the fold of the denim. View 6 shows that the dark in the dress front extends beyond the edge of the denim fabric. View 7 shows how the dart has been marked with a fabric pencil on the pale blue denim; in this image, the dress front lies open with the pattern lying underneath, and an arrow points to the edge of the dress front, where the tissue pattern piece sticks out from under the wrong side of the denim, exposing the tip of the tissue pattern's dart area under the fabric. In figure 8, we see that the dart's excess fabric has been cut away from the dress front, after the darts have been sewn. — Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable sewing patterns for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

Now, when I was making the dress front, I once again found that I didn’t have quite enough fabric to cut Simplicity 4883‘s entire dress front pattern piece on the fold, as the pattern instructions suggested (see Figure 5), but I could just barely fit the pattern on the swatch of folded fabric with only the edge of the dart’s tip hanging over the cut side of the fabric.

I knew that if I cut it out carefully, I could skip over the dart’s tip (see Figure 6) because the tip of the dart isn’t needed. As shown in Figures 7 and 8 above, I ended up cutting away the triangular-shaped inside part of the dart anyway, so the dart’s tip was not a loss of necessary fabric.

So Tip #2 for working with a limited amount of fabric: Don’t bother cutting out bits that won’t show in the final product.

In figure 9 (shown at the top), the ruffle is shown as it's being pinned to the bottom of a denim dress. We see the pink gingham ruffle is toward us. In figure 10, we see the finished dress, with the ruffle attached. Velcro is used as a back closure. The dress has been lined with the same pink gingham fabric that was used for the longer of the two ruffles. — Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable sewing patterns for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

I stitched my paired ruffles onto the base of the dress entirely by hand because the denim ruffle was very narrow, and sewing by hand allowed me to use the smallest possible seam allowance, giving the denim ruffle a bit more visibility.

That brings me to Tip #3 for working with a limited amount of fabric: sew by hand to save space on seam allowances.

And as you can see in Figure 10, I’ve used the pink gingham fabric as a lining for the dress, even though the pattern instructions didn’t call for a lining. But I find that when you line a doll’s garment, it gives you a nicer seam around neck and arm openings.

Tip #4 for working with a limited amount of fabric is this: line the dress or shirt with the secondary fabric.

And on the whole, I think the View 1 dress from my Simplicity 4883 vintage Tammy doll clothes pattern turned out really well!

A vintage Tammy doll is shown modeling a pale blue denim dress with a floral print and a two-layered ruffle at the bottom of the dress. The doll holds out a little matching handbag made of the same pale blue denim fabric. The doll has long, almost-floor-length auburn hair, which is straight and has no bangs (fringes). Although she is a vintage Ideal Tammy doll, she has had a face repaint and she has had her hair changed to this lovely auburn straight hair (from the original strawberry blond curly short hair that she came with). Her shoes are made of silver plastic. Her dress fits her body like a sheath dress with a tie-belt that matches the pale blue floral denim of the dress, but the two-layered ruffle (which is also shown in a close-up image to the side of the full-doll image) has a top layer made of light blue floral fabric and a layer of ruffle underneath, made from pink gingham. This lower layer of ruffle is an inch or two centimeters long, while the upper layer is less than a half inch or less than one centimeter long, making the pink gingham ruffle stand out. This coordinates nicely with the pale pastel colored flowers on the blue denim, including pink flowers, white flowers, some blue flowers, and the green leaves. It makes the pink flowers really pop on the denim fabric. — Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable sewing patterns for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

I had a very teeny-tiny swatch of the floral denim fabric left when it was all done, and I used this to make the little purse that Tammy’s holding in the image above.

And therefore, Tip #5 can be stated as follows: choose projects that are realistic for the amount of fabric you do have.

And that’s it for my sewing hacks on Simplicity 4883 and how to work with a limited amount of fabric.

This shows the cover art for the envelope of a Simplicity 4883 doll clothes sewing pattern for Ideal Tammy dolls, including a ball gown, a coat, an everyday sleeveless dress with a ruffle at the bottom, a pair of pedal pushers with a crop top (sleeveless), and a wrap-around skirt that has suspenders under a checkered red shirt with short sleeves. There's also a closet made from a cardboard shoe box shown on this pattern's cover art, and instructions for making it are included. — Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable sewing patterns for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

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Disclaimer/Credit/Affiliate Marketing Link:

*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.