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:
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)--
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...
P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!
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!
P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!
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.
-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:
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!
P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, encounters with Chainsaw Helicopters, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!
So, I just need to preface my story by telling you two things:
I would absolutely, 100% tandem skydive again in a heartbeat. It was WONDERFUL, I loved it, and dissociating myself back there got me through my last dental cleaning.
The literal first thing I did after touching ground and being unclipped from my instructor was roll over onto my hands and knees and dry-heave onto the grass.
But I did not actually vomit!
But anyway! My fiftieth birthday earlier this summer was excellent. I ate a lot of cookie cake and spent the whole day with my favorite people, accruing experience gifts like a dungeon crawler collecting loot boxes (Guess what I'm currently reading, lol!). The little kid and I solved a murder mystery. Mr. Craft Knife and I decided to ride a ferry up the coast of Norway this winter so we can see the Northern Lights. And the big kid arranged for the two of us to go tandem skydiving, something that we've talked about together for years, but always with that sort of "someday, I wish" vibe.
Turns out that Someday, I Wish is an actual calendar date in August!
I mean, look! It even says DANGER right there on her harness!
MY harness doesn't proclaim any such thing!
It was a perfect day for skydiving, and although it took a good two hours from arrival to flinging ourselves out of an airplane, sitting in the shade of an airplane hanger, reading my Matt Dinniman and watching parachutes meander down to Earth was a quite lovely way to spend an afternoon.
The big kid and I each got our own personal photographer for the trip, but since Mr. Craft Knife and the little kid had also wanted to tag along to watch us fall out of an airplane, I gave them my camera to take photos, too, so the big kid and I basically had a whole entire paparazzi experience. We got photos of ourselves from one side--
Fun fact: I wasn't sure what to wear, so I got onto Skydive Indianapolis' Insta to see what everyone else was wearing and then matched it, including cropping a pair of my leggings with scissors. I did a great job, because even my instructor is rocking the cropped leggings look!
--and the other!
You can't tell, but that's me BEAMING and waving from inside the plane. I was so excited to finally be off!
My only previous look at the inside of a plane used for skydiving was in this SNL video--
--and shockingly, they don't actually look like the inside of a sound stage! This plane had two long benches running parallel along the inside, and we straddled those, facing the back of the plane, our instructors behind us, so they could busy themselves strapping us to them while the plane got high enough:
I'd had it in my mind that I'd better not forget to just double-check that my instructor had attached us before we jumped, since, you know, he was the only one entrusted with the actual parachute, but my god. When this dude was done, I was basically carabinered to him like I was in a metal-forward Baby Bjorn. When he was ready to skydive, he shuffled himself over to the edge of the plane, and I, too, found myself there like luggage strapped to the roof of a car:
My photographer did protest at how tightly he strapped on my goggles, though, and made him loosen them a little bit, which he did not want to do but after looking at my photos I am SO GLAD he did. Goggles so tight that they cut straight into the apples of your cheeks that are already doing weird things in the 120 mph wind are NOT a cute look for the photos that you paid a lot of good money for. The big kid's instructor kind of did her dirty that way, but hey--the important thing to him was that her glasses stayed on her face. And they did!
Anyway, guess who got to go first?!?
Check out my cool as hell photographer clinging like a spider to the OUTSIDE OF THE PLANE.
That's how she gets the shot of my face the first time I see the world this high and not through an airplane window!
Those fucking goggles! Very jealous of the proper skydivers who get to wear the cool-ass helmets.
And here we go!
I swear that I was feeling pretty normal about things, everything considered, but I cannot stop cackling every time I look at that photo. Omg my FACE!!!
The big kid was next, so her photographer also got a couple of shots of me while her instructor was shuffling them into place. Do I look less close to mental collapse in her photos from the plane?
Hahahahaha... nope!
Also, my head is supposed to be BACK. My instructor was griping to his co-workers on the flight up that none of his students had done a single thing he'd told them to do all day, and I guess I'm one of them. Sorry, Dude! My brain wasn't online for instruction-following just then!
This one's a little better, mostly because you can't see my face as much, lol:
And okay, to be fair, I had not exactly visualized what the jump would feel like, but I also had not anticipated that we would do so much tumbling end-over-end. It was fine, though! Just gotta let my dude get settled and release his drogue, and then it became the most insanely disorienting/best experience of my life:
All better!
So, to me, it actually did not feel like falling. Like, at all. It did not even occur to me at the time that I was falling. There's not really any perspective--even if you look at the ground, it's so far away that it doesn't look like you're falling towards it. It's just blue and white all around you, and honestly hard to see anyway partly because of those goddamned goggles but also because there's so much wind. Like, yes, you're feeling the wind because you're falling at terminal velocity, but if you've never done that before then that's not actually what falling feels like. So it's just weird and disorienting and awesome.
It's funny because the big kid actually did not prefer this part of skydiving. You'd never know it, though, because unlike her mother, who has a cartoon for a face, she is the picture of stoicism:
She still loved it, though! She just liked the parachute part better:
The freefall, though, was my own personal absolute favorite thing ever. Check me out--I'm FLYING!!!
The little kid made fun of me because in almost every photo my hands are locked into thumbs-up position. The photographer thumbs-upped me, I thumbs-upped her back, and then forgot that my hands existed and therefore never changed it up!
I'm pretty sure my instructor physically un-thumbs-upped my hands for me, lol.
Sooo... I had a little bit of an issue when my instructor deployed our parachute. I was 100% completely fine through the tumbling end-over-end and the falling through the air belly-first at 120 mph, and even the jolt of the parachute was totally fine, but I guess then the instructors have to steer us over to the actual landing site, and they've got to do whatever parachute-steering maneuvers they have to do to get us in the right spot and make sure we're not knocking against the other parachutes, and so on. And for us, this meant that all of a sudden my happy freefall fun time was taken away and instead we did a bunch of spins.
A whole bunch of spins.
If there's one thing that you might not know about me but should, it's that I. Do. Not. Spin. My eardrums are kind of fucked up and my sense of being upright and on balance in the world is iffy at best. Spin me, and any hope that I will ever be able to rearrange myself properly on this planet is over, at least until after I've had some ginger ale and a very, very, very long nap.
So all that fun, all the flying in an airplane and then jumping out of a plane and then falling through the air like a goddess, and I'm taken out by some spins.
Meanwhile, though, look how Mr. Craft Knife got photos of us up so high!
My parachute is the one at the bottom. Apparently we are spinning AND we are sideways. I had no hope.
Leveled off, at least! And we seem to have stopped spinning, yay!
Here's a good shot of the big kid's parachute:
Right behind me out of the plane, and right behind me back on the ground!
So, um... did you notice anything about that photo of my beautiful, brave daughter parachuting to the ground?
Yeah...
But I did not vomit! I just really, really, really felt like I was going to.
Ugh. Of all the things that could have gone wrong, it had to have been SPINNING!!!
Anyway, NEXT time I go skydiving, I will take two Dramamine an hour before I jump.
P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!
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