Love Me Some Doll Clothes

I love dolls so it should come as no surprise that I love making doll clothes. The "clients" patiently endure fitting after fitting, and they never complain about my fabric choices. It's been many, many years since I've made doll clothes so now that I have a granddaughter of suitable age, I thought the time was right to indulge myself.

The clothes for American Girl dolls are large enough so you can add lots of fun details, yet still small enough so that they can be made from mere scraps. My granddaughter was the lucky hand-me-down recipient of one of her aunt's American Girl dolls - her Girl of Today (I was the lucky recipient of Josephina and, yes, I will eventually make clothes for her as well) and now I plan for her - my granddaughter, that is - to be the lucky recipient of a hand made wardrobe for her doll as well. I'll be using Simplicity 7083, which includes enough pieces for a nice-sized wardrobe.

I made the first piece today, a pair of white twill "jeans." They turned out well despite a few construction details that left me scratching my head, most notably a back seam opening where the fabric doesn't overlap. Instead, the overlap is constructed by offsetting the Velcro. No pictures of this because I didn't have any Velcro on hand, but I'll be sure to post photos when that's complete. Unless that works out a lot better than I'm imagining, I'll probably modify the pattern to add an overlap before making the pants again.

They do fit the doll beautifully. After I make the matching jacket, I'll post a photo of the outfit on the model.

I added some embroidery on the hem/side seam of the right leg of the pants. I used a vine stitch on my sewing machine to stitch the leaves, then added hand-worked French knots. I'll do something that coordinates when I make the jacket.

I constructed these little pants entirely using my sewing machine, by first zig-zag finishes all the exposed seam allowances, then stitching the seams. I would have used my serger (you see how bold I am becoming!) but I didn't have enough spools of white thread to pull it off.