I Might Have the Obsession With American Girl Dolls Version of Perimenopause. Anyway, Here's My Review of All Dolled Up!

All Dolled Up: Sewing Clothes and Accessories for Girls and Their 18-Inch Dolls by Joan Hinds
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Welcome to my summer obsession! Also, does anyone else want to die from the cuteness of those dinosaur pajamas, or am I just really that deep into perimenopause?

Because I personally think they're so freaking cute that I can't stand it. If I saw an actual toddler out and about in those jammies, I guarantee I'd kidnap it. Turn your head for one minute, parents of cute toddlers, and the next thing you know your kid and I are going to be sprawled out on my living room floor, surrounded by the plastic dinosaur toys I kept from my own kids' childhoods, happily making them roar and chomp at each other while listening to old Nancy Cassidy CDs.

Don't worry, though--I'll bring your kid back when it starts to actually want something or get hungry or whatever. Because my favorite thing about perimenopause is no longer cooking meals!

You're obviously meant to use this book to sew matching outfits for kids and their 18-inch dolls (I hate the gender essentialism in these books, but it's too prevalent to get worked up about lest I simply always be worked up, sigh), but what I really wanted was a selection of classic pattern pieces that I could make my own. Some of the pieces here are a little dated and some are so specific that I didn't think they'd customize well, but otherwise, that's mostly what I got!

The pattern pieces are well laid-out on large-format pattern paper in the back of the book. I've read multiple reviews now of people complaining that patterns laid out in that way are impossible to copy and I'm always like... ??? You literally just have to trace them? 

So many pattern pieces, traced onto tracing paper because that is literally not a big deal?

I think the step-by-step instructions are very well-written and thorough, with illustrations for many steps. I would have liked options laid out for more advanced finishing techniques for seams, especially, but since I was intentionally making my favorite patterns multiple times in different colors and fabrics, I think I figured out nice ways to finish most of the seams.

Check out that nicely finished shoulder seam. No raw edges for my dolls!

My favorite patterns in this book are the Monkey Pajamas (but not with the Monkey applique because that part is kind of corny)--

--the ruffled capris (I also lengthened this pattern so that I could make a full-length pair of ruffled pants)--

--and the T-shirts, which worked fine as-is but which I also ended up modifying to make them a little roomier and to utilize the finished hems of upcycled thrifted shirts:

These T-shirts are exactly what I was thinking of when I was wanting a classic, easily modified pattern that I could customize however I wanted. They're simple, they work with all knit fabrics from jersey knit to ribbed knit to four-way stretch to stretch velvet, and I've currently got Mr. Craft Knife working on making me .svg files of cute little appliques that I can add to them. 

Because if you thought that a doll-sized set of flannel dino jammies was cute, think about how cute a little dino T-shirt will be!

P.S. View all my reviews.

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I Sewed Many and Varied Little American Girl Doll Leggings

Okay, I said that the American Girl doll T-shirts were my favorite thing to sew--and they are!--but these leggings are just almost my favorite thing to sew.

They're MUCH simpler than the T-shirts, for one thing. And they're just as cute, and just as amenable to every kind of knit fabric, from performance stretch to old T-shirts, so the possibilities are endless. 

I actually didn't like this pattern, the Snow Day Pants from Doll Fashion Studio, by Joan Hinds, when I first made it, and the first pair of leggings that I sewed following the instructions as-written are now the American Girl doll equivalent of painting clothes, ahem. Like, the instructions tell you to zig-zag stitch the elastic straight to the raw edge of the waist? WHY, THOUGH, when there are so many options just as easy and way cuter?

I modified the pattern quite a lot, including lengthening it so I could also make a full-length version, and remembering that I have a random but huge stash of fold-over elastic in the closet that looks a LOT nicer sewn to raw edges, and now, I LOVE this pattern!

I love the fold-over-elastic at the waist and the ankles for the knit and rib knit fabrics:

And since I'd already made about a million American Girl doll T-shirts by the time I took a break for leggings, I also love using an old T-shirt for leggings, including its existing hem:

Even cuter when I realized that I had room on most old shirts to make both a doll T-shirt AND doll leggings! They're so perfectly matchy!

If you put them both on the doll, they're basically those jersey knit pajama sets that I used to put on my daughters, and that I would in all honestly 1000% wear myself if they just made them in my size. 

I'm already working on an American Girl doll skeleton costume using a black T-shirt and leggings set. Stay tuned!

Alternatively, you can mix and match for comfy play clothes in any color range:

Anyway, I made a bunch of these leggings for my niece's doll, too, just because I think it's nice to have plenty of neutral-ish options for dressing her doll. The simpler the components, the bigger the scope for imagination!

As an example, lol, see the outfits that my kids came up with when I asked them to dress our dolls in some of these new clothes before I sent them off to my niece:

full-length leggings, long-sleeved T-shirt, and puffed-sleeve blouse

long-sleeved T-shirt, short-sleeved T-shirt, and 3/4-length leggings

full-length leggings made from four-way stretch, and a doll tunic a kid made once upon a time from one of their old newborn onesies

sleeveless dress, short AND long-sleeved T-shirts, and 3/4-length leggings

You can see I got a little lost in the weeds sewing doll T-shirts and leggings all summer, right? I kept thinking of new fabrics to test and pattern variations to try, and while I was doing that the summer whisked itself away and now I have to sew a bunch of witch hats as fast as I can.

OMG, y'all. SHOULD I SEW AMERICAN GIRL DOLL WITCH HATS?!?

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This Is Literally Only My Fifth Time At Valley Forge Stop Making Me Sound Weird!

Turns out that Junior year is peak college drop-off vibes--for the first time, we did not have to run to Target mid move-in for ANYTHING when we took the little kid back to school last month!

We were doing so great that we got everything moved into the kid's room, helped her arrange and rearrange all her furniture to her liking, tracked down the maintenance crew to loft her bed, got everything on the walls, star stickers and all (these are preferred, since they're the kid's class color), AND went downtown for a big lunch--and we still had a couple of hours before we absolutely had to say goodbye...

so I finally managed to achieve my dream of getting the kid to come with me to Valley Forge!

Despite living most of the past two years practically next door, she hasn't been there since she was this big:

Baby ballerina/Junior Ranger, 2016

And now check her out, all grown up and back again on the parade field:

Also, I cannot believe that I just did that to myself. The main goal during the first month after college drop-off is NOT to ugly cry during normal life activities, dang it!

It's cool. I'll just try again tomorrow. One day I'll make it a whole day without crying!

Anyway, the actual best thing about your completely grown-up kid (sob!) knowing that they're about to say goodbye to you for a couple of months is that until then, they're fairly amenable to whatever nonsense you suggest. So not only did I get the kid to Valley Forge, but I got her to watch the orientation film--

--check out the museum in the visitor center with me (where she hilariously got mistaken for a child by a group of actual children and ended up amiably making log cabins with them)--

--and then finally come with me on my clearly more than once a year (ahem) pilgrimage to the statue of Baron Von Steuben, my favorite Revolutionary War hero:

His former parade grounds were looking grand--

--and the hawthorn berries were ripe:

There were actually a lot of other people paying homage to Baron Von Steuben at the same time we were, including someone walking around narrating into their phone--if you see us in the background of someone's travel vlog, please tag me, lol!

Eventually, though, Mr. Craft Knife and I did have to face the fact that we had to get a couple more hours down the road to our hotel, and this precious heart entrusted to us had to get started on another year of awesome adventures, so we drove back to school, said our goodbyes, and while Mr. Craft Knife pulled out of the parking lot I waved and waved and waved at this very last of sites to see:

Mind you, we're not exactly going home right away. There are a couple of national park sites not completely out of the way of our path that I thought we might just have a little sneaky around first...

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How To Sew An Easy Doll Skirt

I originally published this tutorial over at Crafting a Green World.

This doll skirt is SO easy to sew!

When I first started sewing doll clothes, I thought that the process was super complicated–all those tiny seams on all those tiny bits of fabric!–but it turns out that I was just picking out super complicated patterns. Like, I don’t even sew clothes with that many complicated construction techniques and fussy embellishments for myself, much less for a toy!

Fortunately, after lots and lots of sewing lots and lots of picky patterns, I got a lot more comfortable with winging it, and I figured out how to apply the elements of flat construction used in doll clothing to my favorite simple methods of sewing quick clothing pieces.

And now I’ve got all kinds of fun pieces that a kid can mix and match for the doll and that I didn’t have to spend an entire evening cussing down the house to sew!

This doll skirt is particularly easy to sew, even more so with the flat construction method that doll clothing uses. Although my photos here show me making skirts for my niece’s 18-inch doll, you can use this method to sew a skirt for any doll.

Here’s how!

Materials

To make a doll skirt for any size doll, you will need the following:

• fabric. Scraps and stash work great for this project–if you can fold the fabric over twice and still stitch through it, you can use it! For the skirts in these photos, I used one of my kid’s old bedsheets for one skirt, and some stash quilting cotton for the other skirt. See Step 1 for dimensions.
• elastic. You can use most types of elastic for this, so definitely prioritize what you’ve got on hand, but I use 1/4″ elastic for pretty much every doll clothing project, so that’s what I’ve got here. If you use a different width, you’ll want to recalculate the width of fabric you cut and the width of the fold for the elastic channel.
• measuring, cutting, and sewing supplies.

Step 1: Measure and cut the fabric and elastic.

First, measure and cut the elastic for the skirt’s waist. Measure around the doll’s natural waist, and cut elastic to that exact measurement. You’ll lose .5″ from the length of the elastic when you sew the skirt, and that will provide plenty of snugness for a good fit.

For the skirt, first measure from the doll’s natural waist to the spot where you want the bottom hem of the skirt to hit. If you need to add a stitched hem, add .5″ to this measurement, but there are lots of circumstances in which you wouldn’t need to! For instance, I really liked the selvedge of the fabric that I used to make the skirt in the photo below, so I used that for the skirt’s bottom edge and didn’t hem the bottom at all.

For the sharks skirt that I’m sewing in these photos, I similarly used the finished edge of the sheet as my bottom hem–again, no extra sewing needed! The polka dot quilting cotton skirt is the only one in these photos that needed the extra .5″ for the bottom hem.

Assuming you’re using 1/4″ elastic for the waistband, add another .5″ to the measurement to accommodate the waistband casing.

The width of the skirt should be at least twice the length of the elastic, but you can go even longer, especially if your fabric is thin or drapey.

And for all of these measurements, since I’m explicitly trying to use up my stash, I fudge my measurements as necessary if it helps me use up a bit more stash. Would a skirt that’s 1″ longer or 2″ puffier let me avoid tossing a bit of scrap into the garbage? If so, that skirt is going to be a bit longer or puffier!

For a standard American Girl doll, my elastic measurement is 10.5″. My skirt measurement is 5.5″ long with a pre-finished bottom hem, and 6″ if I need to hem the bottom myself, and at least 21″ wide, but I’ll go up to 24″ if it helps me not have to toss a scrap.

Step 2: Measure, fold, and stitch the bottom hem and waistband casing.

If you’re hemming the bottom yourself, fold it over 1/4″ to the inside, then fold it again to hide the raw edge. Stitch along the folded edge to hem.

For the waistband casing, assuming you’re using 1/4″ elastic, fold the top edge of the skirt over 1/2″ to the inside. We’re not minding the raw edge, but if you do, just add enough length to the original skirt measurement to accommodate a double fold here, too.

For the tidiest waistband casing, you’ll be stitching twice: stitch one line along the raw edge, then stitch another line along the fold.

I think this makes the top edge of the waistband look just a little crisper. It’s a tiny detail, but surprisingly noticeable!

Step 3: Insert the elastic and stitch.

Pin a safety pin to one end of the elastic, then thread it through the waistband casing.

At each end of the casing, stitch back and forth to secure the elastic. This is different from circle construction, in which you’d sew the two sides of the skirt together, then insert the elastic, etc. Flat construction like this is often reserved specifically for doll clothing, but I don’t know why, because it’s genius!

Your skirt should now have a finished bottom hem and an elasticized top hem.

Step 4: Stitch the two sides of the skirt together.

Using a 1/4″ hem, stitch the two short sides of the skirt together, right sides together.

Iron the raw edges of the hem to one side, then stitch along the raw edge to make it tidy and flat.

In the above photo, you can see that the line of stitching is barely noticeable, but it’s one more little detail that makes this simple skirt look really nice.

These skirts are so quick and easy to make that they’re honestly kind of addictive. I had to force myself to stop at two so that I could write this tutorial, but just between us, I’m probably about to pop back into my studio and make just a few more.

And then maybe some shirts to match. And maybe a little sweater. And if I’m making a sweater, I should probably make a hat to match!

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American Girl Doll T-Shirts Are The Most Satisfying Sewing Project

Which I guess is why I've sewn so many!

I started with the basic T-shirt pattern from All Dolled Up, by Joan Hinds, which is an absolute classic, a super versatile pattern with both short- and long-sleeved versions. It's perfectly fitted to the waist of the modern American Girl doll, so much so that you need to be very precise about where you place the back fasteners--

--and you'd likely need to alter that part of the pattern if you were sewing for a wider doll. 

But for American Girl dolls, it's perfect!

As written, the pattern works great both for jersey knit (check out what a cute T-shirt this very, very, very last scrap sock monkey fabric turned into!)--

-and for fussy cutting elements from existing T-shirts. This perfectly proportioned Hawaii graphic T-shirt--

--came from a shirt that once upon a time belonged to a small daughter!

I also liked transforming a once VERY well-loved horse print daughter's shirt--

--into one that looks just like it, but smaller:

A few of these shirts in, though, I figured out that if I altered the pattern a little bit, I could actually cut the pieces to utilize the existing hems of old T-shirts, AND I could also seam rip off and use their neck ribbing, which I think makes the shirts look very realistic, as well as being more eco-friendly:

I also realized that I only have to zigzag seams along the neck and waist, so the top-stitching looks much neater!

The vintage shirt that I cut this T-shirt from was very pilled, so I didn't give this piece to my niece. I love it, though--it reminds me of my 70s childhood!

The exact color match of the neck ribbing to the rest of the T-shirt is the main detail in making the doll T-shirt look realistic, and that's completely solved when you upcycle an old T-shirt:

I found an episode of Sewing With Nancy featuring Joan Hinds herself (!!!!!!), showing Nancy making one of these doll T-shirts with a serger:

It's interesting to me to contrast the first T-shirt I made, on the left, to one of the more recent ones:

I was also trying to upcycle an old jersey knit pillowcase, including its existing seam, for that shirt on the left, and that didn't do it any favors.

There really is real benefit it making 100 of the same thing--every 20th iteration, you figure out how to make it a little better or you get an idea of how to do it a little differently! 

I cannot emphasize strongly enough how SATISFYING these little T-shirts are to make. From fussy cutting tiny pieces to precisely top-stitching tiny seams, I swear that I spent half my summer humming happily to myself, listening to the latest Mumford & Sons album over and over and over again, and sewing doll T-shirts.

We didn't do a big summer trip this year, so I had to do something to keep myself entertained, I guess! 

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