As I type this first sentence, the ground outside my sewing room window is wet with early morning rain. It smells lovely out there!
But this means fall is underway, here in the northern hemisphere, so it might be a good time to do a blog post on cape-making. Specifically, today’s post will show you how I made a welted opening in a cape, so a doll can pass her arm though the arm slit. I’ll be making the View D cape from McCall’s 6420 (see image above).
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Normally the back of the pattern envelope suggests fabrics to use for your pattern, but for McCall’s 6420, that’s not the case. It actually gives you six more outfits, which are displayed on the back. Can you believe it?
I love how this pattern offers SO many different outfits to make! It’s truly one-of-a-kind! But this left me wondering what type of fabric to use for my cape.
I had made my vintage Bubble Cut Barbie a beautiful butterfly print sheath dress (see image below), so I decided I would line the cape with a matching butterfly print cotton fabric. And I had two sheets of turquoise blue craft felt, which didn’t exactly match the two shades of blue butterflies in her dress, but I thought maybe it might coordinate with this fabric anyway. (I’ll let you be the judge at the end.)
Let’s break it down into the steps you see above…
Figure 1: Have you ever tried to use a Dritz fabric pencil on craft felt? Yeah… It doesn’t work. And felt is too thick for me to use my lightbox to mark the slits for the welted arm holes. So I just used a plain old #2 pencil.
Figure 2: I marked the top and bottom of the slit line with dots, then I drew the line between them after removing the pattern piece.
Figure 3: It seemed strange to me, but the pattern and the instructions suggested that you make a Y cut at the top and bottom of the slit. I wondered why they didn’t want me to cut a T-shape instead. Looking back after the fact, I think the Y-shaped cut is supposed to keep the hole from becoming obnoxiously wide for Barbie’s little hands.
Figure 4: Before stitching the cotton lining to the felt outer garment piece, I lined the two garment pieces up, drew my slit on the butterfly cotton fabric, and cut the cotton fabric’s hole as well.
Figure 5: I could have tried to make my welts out of felt, but for Barbie, felt is a very thick fabric. So I opted for a turquoise blue cotton that matched the felt’s color fairly well. Figure 5 shows the welts’ fabric swatches.
Figure 6: I’ve attached the lining to the outer fabric, sewing from the collar (A), to the front, continuing down the front (B), and finishing after following the hemline (C). Section D, which has a notch, will later be attached to the back piece, so I used that section to invert it. Then, of course, I pressed this garment piece before working with the welt-style arm openings.
Figure 7: When I read the instructions for this section, I must say it took me by surprise. I actually had to sew the welt fabric to the garment piece, keeping my stitches as close to the edges of the opening as possible. I used a tiny backstitch here.
Figure 8: Next, I cut through to the opening I’d previously cut.
Figure 9: I tried my best to exactly mimic the original cut features, including those Y-shapes at the top and bottom.
Figure 10: This is where it got tricky! If I was going to do this again, I’d cut my welt fabric about a half centimeter bigger on all 4 sides! I was supposed to fold the cotton welt fabric through the hole. Ugh!
Figure 11: At this point, I wondered if I would have to start all over. I was struggling to push the rough-cut edges of the welt fabric through both layers (the felt fabric plus the cotton butterfly fabric lining), and once on the other side, I needed to hide those raw edges by folding it yet again on the inside/lining side! Double ugh!
Figure 12: This one’s missing because I can’t count. Whoops!
Figures 13 and 14: You can barely tell that I’ve stitched all the way around the opening, but if you look at the other images in this set, you can see that I definitely did stitch it all the way around.
Figure 15: I tried to stitch the welt fabric to the lining fabric without incorporating the felt fabric at all, but it was very, very difficult.
Figure 16: I used a whipstitch here, and yes, pinning it down helped control the fabric, which kept trying to curl back toward the felt side of the garment.
Figure 17: From here, I just needed to a.) complete the other front piece exactly like I’d sewn this one and b.) sew both front cape pieces to the back cape piece along that seam that runs from the collar, across the doll’s shoulder, and down to the hem. You can see that seam clearly illustrated by the doll on the right, in the image below.
Overall, I’m happy with how this cape turned out, but the “welt” style of arm opening looks a little different on the envelope’s cover art than it does on my cape.
I followed the directions to the best of my ability, but maybe I cut my slits too big. Or maybe I stitched around the slits too widely. Or maybe I should have used a contrasting thread to create top stitching around the arm openings…?
I’m curious to see what you think. Feel free to leave advice, suggestions, or opinions in the comments section. And be sure to scroll down to the “Question” section (just below this image):
See how those welt arm slits look different on the envelope? I wonder if those seams around the arm hole openings are just topstitching…?
Question: Now that you’ve seen the final product, what are your thoughts on my color choices for this cape? Does the butterfly lining match the turquoise blue outer felt fabric okay, or would you have gone with another color?
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You’ll never convince me that anyone made these early McCalls outfits come out as smooth as the illustrations. I think they just miniaturized adult outfits and expected sewists to make it work. You did a great job! Just wondering, since you used felt, could you have gotten away with just turning the felt inside one time, rather than twice? Might have laid flatter. Regardless,n you knocked it out of the park. I doubt I even would have attempted? Brava!
Thank you for your kind assessment! If I was to make this garment a second time, I wouldn’t use felt at all. I would just use cotton. I really think the felt made it too thick to seem realistic.
It would be easier to make the welted pocket, as well, if I had only used cotton.
It’s normal to do a Y cut at each end of the cut – I think (on an adult garment) it makes the corners less likely to fray or rip.
Thanks for the tip. I wondered about that.