Because Not Even Dolls Like To Spread Their Germs Around

I've been so busy learning to sew brand-new types of doll garments from various pattern books and websites that I forgot all about the one doll garment that I've been sewing regularly ever since the pandemic...

My 18" doll cloth masks!

Fortunately, a recent order (of this pretty red/green combo) reminded me--

--so while I was at my work table with the pattern in hand and cutting and sewing already, I also whipped up a mask to go with the American Girl doll wardrobe that I'm sewing for a niece's birthday later this summer:

I even found a scrap that would work with the green bias tape I was already using so that I didn't have to change my thread. It's a win for lazy sewists everywhere!

If you want your own version, I make and sell these 18" doll cloth masks in your choice of colors over at my Pumpkin+Bear etsy shop. It actually hadn't occurred to me to also offer the mask in a choice of prints, but this one *is* pretty cute...

Stay tuned, I guess!

If you're keeping count, so far this summer I've sewed:

• 2 18" doll sleeveless dresses with gathered waists
• 2 18" doll rompers
• 2 18" doll blouses with puffed sleeves
• 1 18" doll cloth mask

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I Read Doll Couture, Because Sewing Doll Clothes is My Newest Mid-Life Crisis Hobby

Doll Couture: Handcrafted Fashions for 18-inch Dolls by Marsha Greenberg
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Doll Couture starts with a couple of assumptions that you have to understand in order to fully utilize this pattern book. The first, which Greenberg states overtly, is that the patterns and instructions are meant to be used with handkerchiefs, tea towels, doilies, and other small vintage home goods. And to this end, Greenberg includes ample tips, tricks, and instructions for how to incorporate these sometimes delicate, sometimes finicky fabrics, from fussy cutting tea towel graphics to sizing crocheted doilies for a doll’s overskirt. This is an almost impossibly niche sub-topic in sewing, but totally valid and relevant. I do sort of wonder if anyone has ever used this book as intended to sew anything for their doll from these types of vintage fabrics, but honestly, it’s fine if nobody has--information for information’s sake is worthwhile!

The assumption that I had more issues with is the assumption that the reader is already familiar with the many basic tropes and mechanics of sewing for a doll. I’m a fine sewist, but I’ve never sewn doll’s clothing before, and I was baffled by the instructions for my first project, a simple dress with a sleeveless bodice and gathered skirt. I feel like Greenberg might have suspected that there was something confusing in her instructions, because she included the specific advice to read the instructions multiple times until you understood them, but no amount of re-reading was going to help me understand that a doll’s dress is constructed flat, with fastenings all down the back, because Greenberg never actually explains that. Without any guidance to the contrary, I figured that doll dresses were constructed the same way human dresses are--a finished skirt in the round, and a bodice that fastens up the back. I was so confused, and did a lot of seam ripping and trying again, but eventually I figured it out and didn’t have that same trouble with any of the patterns again, but it feels like something that should have been explicitly stated or shown in a photo.

I didn’t try every pattern, but the romper also skipped a couple of steps, requiring me to figure out how to attach the ruffle on my own. And to make it extra confusing, that one IS a slip-on pattern, so I kept trying to over-complicate it in my head by wondering where the back fastenings would be and if I wasn’t supposed to be constructing it flat, etc.

 

Most of the book is a lookbook of sorts, with full-color photos of dolls wearing elaborately embellished garments sewn from those vintage handkerchiefs, tea towels, and doilies. There’s a key to show you which patterns were used in each garment, but it’s not comprehensive, as the garments in the photos clearly show a variety of sleeves, skirt lengths, and romper bib styles, for example, that are not in the patterns. I really wanted that alternative romper bib with more coverage, too!

I ended up sewing multiples of three patterns that I’m pretty happy with: the sleeveless dress, the romper, and a blouse with puffed sleeves. The sleeveless dress is pretty similar to other basic basic doll dress patterns that I’ve seen, but it comes together exceptionally neatly with finished seams and a lining, and it’s easy to see where to add top-stitching and additional lining components to make the dress look even nicer. The blouse and the romper are both unique, though, and the romper especially is not something I’ve seen reflected in any other 18” doll pattern book--everybody’s book has a blouse pattern, but this is the only pair of American Girl doll overalls! The book lacks a regular, non-romper pants pattern, though, which is a bummer.

 

I didn’t utilize any of the lookbook images as inspiration to add embellishments, but I am looking forward to digging through my stash of fancier fabric scraps to use with that sleeveless dress pattern--I think I could end up with a very cute little ballgown that way!

P.S. View all my reviews

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I Sewed American Girl Doll Blouses With Puffed Sleeves

Unlike the rompers, which I desperately want in my size, I do not long for a pair of me-sized blouses with puffed sleeves, but I do have to admit that they're well-constructed!

That's definitely a feature of the book Doll Couture, which this pattern is from. I don't particularly love any of the designs other than the romper (although I LOVE the romper!), but the three patterns I've sewn from it so far have come together beautifully. The sleeveless dresses remain the easiest, and could be made in infinite iterations depending on fabric and by adjusting the skirt length and volume, but I'm having a little trouble finding complementary additions to the rompers and these blouses.

I intended these blouses to be worn with the two rompers that I also sewed from Doll Couture, so I sewed them from solid fabric. The white one works great with the unicorn kittycat romper, but the grey one not so much with the galaxy romper. Hopefully, I'll find some patterns in different books that I can switch out, but ultimately, it'll of course be up to my niece to decide what goes with what.

The only tricky part of this blouse pattern is centering the collar, since it's very obvious if it's uneven. There are a few fussy elements, such as gathering those puffed sleeves, and I got a lot of TV watching accomplished while stitching tiny buttons and buttonholes:

--and even though the buttons are all vintage choices that the older kid helped me find in my stash, I think they match perfectly!

The kids' dolls like them, too!

What color shirt are we thinking would look better with the galaxy romper? Cream? Black? This grey isn't the worst, but I'm not really feeling like it goes with the romper:

I guess it's not so bad from the side--maybe it's the blue ruffle that's throwing the outfit off? Fortunately, the white blouse is perfect with the unicorn kittycat romper:

I also don't know if I like the look of the puffed sleeves plus the ruffles, but if I do want to switch the pieces up I'll have to figure out what bottom DOES go with puffed sleeves... and now I know that I definitely am thinking too hard about this! Because what I actually would like is for my niece to throw all proper outfit combos out the window and instead dress her doll in a puffed sleeve blouse plus a pair of pajama bottoms plus a tiered skirt plus a fleece vest plus a newsboy cap plus a pair of booties, and then get it all dirty making doll-sized mud pies together.

Up next on my sewing table are flannel pajamas and jersey knit T-shirts from All Dolled Up, and then I might dig through my fancy fabric scraps, because surely a doll's wardrobe is not complete without several ball gowns, party dresses, and dress-up outfits!

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I Sewed These Rompers for American Girl Dolls, But I Wish I'd Sewn Them For Me, Instead

I'd omit the ruffles, but otherwise, I would wear the absolute SNOT out of this galaxy romper if only it was in my size!

Alas, for I did not have several yards of fabric to sew a romper for me, nor do I have a pattern--although I did just Google it and now I've got plenty of possibilities! But what I DID have was two fat quarters of this galaxy print (I miss you, Joann's!) and the romper pattern from Doll Couture, so American Girl Doll rompers it is!

By this point in sewing from Doll Couture (I previously sewed these cute holiday dresses), I was able to read the creator's mind a little better regarding stuff she assumed was obvious enough to leave unsaid, so I was able to figure out the ruffle here without any written instructions--

--but I was still surprised to see how low the bodice sat when I tried it on my doll:

Guess she's supposed to wear a shirt with it, lol!

Or not!

I did eventually make shirts to go with the rompers, but the romper itself is so stinking adorable that I wish it had enough coverage that the doll could wear it by itself. I mean, look at this adorable little space romper!

The unicorn kitty one has shorts instead of pants because I only had one fat quarter of that fabric (SOB, Joann's!):

Here it is being modeled by the big kid's doll, blouse and all:

The instructions for these garments (or, usually, the lack of instructions) get on my nerves, but there's nothing yet that I haven't been able to find my way through, and the garments themselves are beautifully constructed and look very nice, and it's easy to add more professional touches like edge-stitching, linings, etc. I've already waded into a couple of projects from a different library book, and was outraged to find half-way through sewing a pair of leggings that the instructions wanted me to attach elastic to the raw edge of fabric at the waist--and then just LEAVE THE EDGE RAW?!? I sewed it like that, as instructed, because I'd already cut out the pattern pieces so it was too late to change it, but I wasn't happy with it, and I hope I run into a better leggings pattern down the road.

But I don't need a new romper pattern, because this one is perfect!

(Unless I find one with bodice coverage, that is..)

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Sewing American Girl Doll Clothes Is My New Mid-Life Crisis Hobby

One Facebook Story of my little niece holding her brand-new American Girl doll later, and my summer fate is sealed!

The art of sewing doll clothes is fairly new to me, but I always like to learn new things. And once upon a time I would also have told you that the sewing of tiny garments full of fussy, precise details did not appeal to me, but tbh I think that I, myself, am growing fussier as I age, because I kind of don't mind it now. So many precise 1/4" seams! So much tidy edge stitching! Such fussy cutting of novelty prints! I used to hurry through all my sewing to get to the finish as quickly as possible, more than ready to move on to the next exciting thing, but lately I've been pretty into the process, taking my time and focusing on the details and whiling away whole evenings puttering through a project while listening to endless audiobooks.

I just finished Endgame, which was a biography of Bobby Fisher, and now I'm ready for The Long Game, the last book in my hockey smut series!

There are several books of patterns for 18" dolls that I want to sew my way through, and first up is Doll Couture, a book that I actually own but never found the time to dive into when my own little American Girl doll enthusiasts were the right ages to have appreciated my work. Good thing I've got a new audience now!

This simple dress, a sleeveless bodice with a gathered skirt, is my first project:

Highly recommend owning an entire roll of tracing paper--it's so handy!

The instructions in this book are shockingly difficult to parse--they literally didn't tell me that the dress is supposed to come together like this--

--so at every stage I kept trying to sew the skirt into a circle, or stitch the bodice back closed, and once I thought I'd finally figured out what the step I was looking at said to do and ended up sewing the bodice shut at the bottom(?!?), but eventually my very own little Goodwill American Girl doll modeled a well-fitting dress for me:

I literally found her at Goodwill for eight dollars! I LOVE her! I think she's going to be my own personal version of the porch goose, and she's going to have SO many handmade outfits for all seasons and holidays. I need to fix her hair, though, so please send me all your best tips for untangling American Girl doll hair.

And then I sewed another!

I do really like all the tidy details involved, all the edge stitching and stitching down my seams and how nice everything looks when freshly ironed.

Oops, gotta trim that thread!

I experimented with a puffier skirt for the Halloween dress, and I find it much improved.

I really like how well-proportioned small-scale novelty prints look in an 18" doll's garment, and my plan is to use up as many of my novelty prints as possible sewing my niece a wardrobe of doll clothes for her birthday.

I've also been working hard to upgrade my photo set-up:

That's two softboxes plus a giant flexible vinyl panel from Menards that I clamp to my tabletop and sort of slither up the wall to make a seamless backdrop. Vinyl is such a bummer, but I love how it looks.

Now that I've finally cracked what the instructions wanted me to do, this dress is the simplest thing in the world to sew, and it turns out so cute every time. I even upgraded some bits, like fully lining the skirt and finishing the side seams, so mental note to make physical notes so I don't forget!

I considered appliqueing one of the gingerbreads from the skirt fabric onto the bodice, but I thought that it might look too baby-ish to the sophisticated eyes of its future six-year-old recipient. I kind of wish I'd done it anyway, though, because surely one can't have too many gingerbreads on one's outfit!

I had to make myself stop at two dresses for my niece's doll, though, because I have a lot of different patterns that I want to try. But it's surely not too late to sew just a couple of dresses for my own girls' childhood American Girl dolls, so carefully put away in the top of my closet (until I got them out to serve as extra fashion models for these photo shoots, ahem...). 

And of course my own little American Girl doll will need some outfits to wear when she's not helping me out with her fit checks of the garments I'm sewing!

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How To Make a Giant Graphic Pillowcase With An Envelope Back

 

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

Let's say you need a pillowcase. You need it to be organic, because a loved one is going to be mushing her face into it for eight hours every night.

You need it to be soft, because you want your loved one to be comfy so that she gets that whole eight hours.

Oh, and you need it to be awesome, because your loved one is pretty stinkin' awesome.

Using the organic natural flannel given to me by Organic Cotton Plus, I sewed a custom-sized pillowcase with an envelope back for my stinkin' awesome kid. This type of pillowcase works with a pillow of any size, and I'm going to walk you through how to make it.

Once I finished sewing the pillow, my family came together to create the graphic for it. Painting a custom graphic onto blank fabric is pretty easy, and the kids can help! Here's how to do the whole project, step by step:

1. Measure your pillow, and do the math. Your pillowcase will have a French seam on two sides, and an envelope closure with an overlap of 6" in the middle.

First, measure the width of your pillow, and add 1.5" to this measurement for the French seams (each of my French seams is .75"; if your French seams are different, do the math accordingly), and 2" for ease (this is my daughter's pillow, so the pillowcase is a little roomy to make it easier for her to change her linens independently; if you prefer a snugger-fitting pillowcase, allow for less ease).

Now, measure the length of your pillow. Double this measurement, then add 2" for ease, then add 6" for the envelope overlap. If you use 60" natural organic flannel or 110" natural organic flannel, do not include any extra hem allowance to this measurement. You will use the selvage for the inner edge of the envelope, and homemade flannel bias (I'll tell you about this in a minute) for the outer edge of the envelope.

Cut your organic flannel to this measurement.

2. Make and sew the flannel bias trim. Make homemade bias tape that is 4" wide using your favorite flannel print, and use it to trim the cut short side of the organic flannel.

3. Assemble your pillowcase and pin. The beauty of French seams is that you can put together your pillowcase the right way out, so that you can get it just right.

Center your fabric on your cutting table with the right side down, then fold the selvage edge down and over so that it comes 3" past the center. Fold the bias edge down and over so that it also comes 3" past the center going the other way.

Does it look right? Sure, it does! Pin both sides well.

4. Sew both sides using French seams. To make a French seam, I first sew my seam, right sides, out, with a 1/4" seam. I then trim that seam to 1/8", turn it inside out, and iron it (some people iron the seam to one side before turning--I iron after). I sew the seam again, now that the wrong sides are out, with a 1/2" seam, enclosing the raw edge of the first seam.

To do this with the pillow, sew the first seam on both sides, then trim both sides, then turn inside out, iron both sides, and sew the second seam on both sides.

5. Embellish the pillowcase. To freehand a drawing on the natural flannel, first use pencil, which will show up against the cream-colored fabric. I had my partner use this method to draw our kiddo's name and a dragon on the finished pillowcase.

Next, I put cardboard inside the pillowcase to keep any paint from bleeding through and traced the pencil using Jacquard Neopaque fabric paint and a small paintbrush, and I let it dry.

When the paint was dry, I gave my kids Tee Juice markers and let them treat the drawing like a giant coloring page. The Tee Juice markers won't make the fabric stiff like kid-applied Jacquard Neopaque fabric paint will, so it's a better choice for a pillowcase.

After letting the paint dry, I ironed it to heat set it according to the package directions.

My kiddo LOVES her dragon pillow. The flannel is soft and comfy, it's organic so it's safe for little faces (if you're concerned about the fabric paint, just have your kiddo turn her pillow to the blank side for sleeping), and it makes an EXCELLENT canvas for painting beloved imaginary creatures.

Next up? Well, a dragon pillow obviously needs a castle pillow to attack, right? And a knight pillow to save the castle! And a unicorn pillow for the knight to ride!

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Organic Cotton Plus gave me the organic natural flannel for this project, because I can't write about flannel if I haven't let my kids mush their faces into it and tell me if it's comfy!

How to Make a Cardboard Shield from Upcycled Cardboard

 

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

Have a little knight in training at home?

It takes just a few minutes to make your favorite knight her very own shield out of recycled cardboard. A cardboard shield is cheaper than even a cheap-o plastic toy shield, doesn't junk up the environment, and best of all--your child can decorate it herself!

These shields are so quick and easy to make that you don't have to limit your kid to just one; we made the shields in these photos as a party activity at my child's dragon-themed ninth birthday party, constructing them ahead of time and letting the party guests paint them. The shields were a hit, and combined with balloon swords and another giant recycled cardboard box as a paint-and-play castle, there was a LOT of swordplay and castle defending and dragon taming at the party.

Here's how to make your own:

1. Source some cardboard. The shields themselves should be made from sturdy cardboard, ideally corrugated or similar. The band in the back should be made from thin, bendy cardboard.

We obtained the cardboard used to make our shields (as well as our big box castle!) from the food pantry where we volunteer, and used old cardboard record album covers for the bands. If you don't have a handy source for obtaining cardboard, check out Freecycle or your local recycling center.

2. Cut out the shields. Fortunately, shields have a very simple form--for inspiration, do a Google Image search and choose your favorite type. If you're just making one or two shields, you can freehand your shield's shape directly onto the cardboard, but if you're making enough shields to supply a birthday party full of little knights, you may want to draw and cut out a template to trace.

Cut out the shields using a box knife.

3. Add a band to the back. Cut a rectangle out of the thin, bendy cardboard that's approximately 2" wide and 1.5 times the width of the shield. Staple it to the back of the shield, and your knight will have something to hold onto!

4. Paint and decorate. To turn shield decorating into a party activity, I set out the finished cardboard shields and a large set of tempera paint, BioColor paint, and paintbrushes. As kids arrived, they were invited to paint their shield, have my partner make them a balloon sword, help paint the giant cardboard castle, or just play. Every kid opted to paint a shield first thing.

Fortunately, the morning was warm and sunny, so as the kids finished their shields, I set them to dry on the grass, and it didn't take long for their owners to recollect them and add them into their play.

To make this an even more eco-friendly project, opt for DIY cardboard swords as well as shields--although you can't whack a kid across the head with a cardboard sword quite like you can with a balloon sword, it will make for far fewer little balloon pieces to pick up and throw away afterwards.

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Shall I Cross-Stitch You a Bookmark? Because I I Can Cross-Stitch Bookmarks Now!

These bookmarks are going into the kids' Valentine's Day care packages. Each one matches its recipient's school color!

Lit Stitch: 25 Cross-Stitch Patterns for Book Lovers by Book Riot
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The thing about cross-stitch that I’m still not sure about is its focus on decoration. I mostly sew, and any sewing book, even one confined to quilting, will always have a variety of projects, some decorative, but most useful in some way. You’ll get instructions for the odd wall hanging, sure, but you’ll also get pillow covers and zippered bags and pot holders and clothing items and everything else practical and impractical under the sun. So I’m still wrapping my head around the fact that a cross-stitch book seems to generally just show you the actual cross-stitch pattern, and it’s up to you to figure out what to do with it. I feel like you absolutely CAN do a ton of things with a finished cross-stitch, especially something like those pillow covers and zippered bags, maybe even ornaments and patches and embellishments, but it adds more mental work to the process, especially when all I want to do when I see a pattern I like is to literally just stitch it, not try to imagine what its actual purpose in my life will be.

So that’s part of the reason why I ended up stitching multiples of the BOOKS! bookmark pattern. For one thing, I really like the font. And for another, I know what to do with a bookmark!

I didn’t love the book’s instructions for finishing the bookmark, but tbh I didn’t love the way I decided to finish the bookmarks, either. The two bookmarks that I stitched onto Aida I backed with felt and blanket stitched with embroidery floss around the perimeter. The bookmark that I stitched onto burlap I backstitched to the felt and frayed the excess. Neither method looked as tidy as I wanted it to, especially compared to how precise cross-stitching looks to the eye. So if you’ve got a sure-fire, go-to way to finish a cross-stitch bookmark, please let me know!

Backed with felt and midway through its blanket-stitching. I feel like the knots are SO visible!

I loved the font used for the BOOKS! bookmark so much that I was super bummed to see that the book does not contain a complete alphabet in that font. I feel like every craft book that contains a word art project should have to also publish a full alphabet in that font, just in case you like it so much you want to make your own words with it… which in this case I did! Fortunately, with graph paper and plenty of erasing, I did figure out how to make the other letters I needed look like the BOOKS! font. The “A” is maybe a little wonky, but whatever.

Despite the wonky knots, I am so pleased with how this bookmark turned out! I drew F, I, and A patterns to match the font, calculated how to divide seven colors by five letters, and matched the rainbow in the blanket-stitching. I then mailed it to my niece in a box also containing two Eyewitness books and two size 6 T-shirts... and the USPS lost it. I'm waiting to hear from you, Mail Recovery Center!

After reading this book, here are the things that I now know how to do:
* Figure out how many strands of floss to use, within a limited range. I can definitely now eyeball when I need two strands vs. three strands, at least.
* Substitute colors. When I had the revelation that I did not have to purchase the exact color of DMC floss the pattern calls for if I have a similar color already in my stash, it BLEW MY MIND, lol.

Things that I still do not know how to do:
* Figure out what size the project will be. Should I count all the little squares on the pattern and then count all the little squares on my fabric? Measure the number of squares per inch and multiply?
* Finish a project. Do I bind the edges or anything? Glue them? Put it in a frame or something? The blanket stitching that I used to finish two of my bookmarks was particularly irritating to me, since I couldn’t find an invisible, or even tidy-looking, way to knot the ends of the floss. So all my knots are basically either the biggest, most visible knots ever created… or already falling out. Sigh!

In related news, I both own more bookmarks than I’ll ever need in this lifetime and am obsessed with how quickly cross-stitch bookmarks stitch up and how cute they are. Raise your hand if you want me to cross-stitch you a bookmark, I guess!

P.S. View all my reviews,

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