Guest Post: Easy Skirt for Any Doll

 

[This post is a guest post! Thank you to Ollie  for providing this post for me to add to my blog!]

Hi, I’m Damien’s partner Ollie! I’m a writer by trade, but my hobbies are embroidery and sewing doll clothes. (Tip: If you ever monetize a hobby, make sure you have one that you haven’t monetized, or you’ll have nothing to do for fun.)

I’ve seen a lot of doll collectors who lament how expensive doll clothes can be, but are too scared to try sewing. And I get it! It seems intimidating, and the outlay of a sewing machine is expensive for something you aren’t sure you’re going to use; plus, there’s the ever-present fear of screwing up and wasting materials. I’m here to tell you that you can absolutely sew by hand, and that you can make cute clothes with very limited, inexpensive materials!

I sew most of my doll clothes by hand because I enjoy the process, and because on a smaller scale, the machine can sometimes eat fabric. This easy skirt is one of the first things I ever learned to make, some 15 years before I started actively improving my sewing. It can be made very inexpensively, with some basic materials, and does not require any pattern. And the shapes are very simple—it’s just one rectangle of fabric. So it’s really easy for a first project, for a novice sewist of any age!

[a small purple cat doll and sewing supplies. Scissors, needle, thread, fabric, fabric marker, elastic, ribbon, and a straightening iron for pressing]

You will need:

•Fabric. I recommend something non-stretchy, like cotton—I’m using a roll that I got at the Dollar Tree for $1.25, but you could use fabric from an old button-down shirt or similar.

•A pair of scissors. I like having fabric scissors and embroidery scissors, but if it cuts it’ll work.

•Pencil/marker/fabric pen. Try to find something that won’t bleed through the fabric or rub off on your doll. I use a disappearing ink fabric marker, but a regular #2 pencil works fine.

•Thread. This is available in some dollar stores or Walmart, often for under a dollar. You’ll probably want one that matches your fabric, but I used purple so you can see the stitches better.

•Hand-sewing needles. I buy packs at Walmart or the craft store, but you can also get little clothing repair kits at the grocery store or gas stations that will have needles and some thread!

•Flat elastic. For this project I used ¼ inch wide elastic; you can use anything if it scales decently to your doll.

•A safety pin to pull the elastic.

•An iron or a hair straightener. Optional but will make everything look much nicer. (Some people have recommended using a heavy book to flatten stuff, but I’ve never had success with that.)

•Your doll. Any doll or plushie will work! Meet Ari; they are a Miao sculpt from the company ResinSoul.

•Optional: Ribbon for a few of the options in the “additional notes” section.

The one skill you might have to look up is how to backstitch. That’s the stitch I use for nearly everything, but I didn’t want to bog this down with a backstitch tutorial, so I’ve linked one instead of sending.

Instructions:

1. Take your doll and fabric, and decide where you want the skirt to rest on their waist, and how long you want it to be. I’d like it about mid-waist, and a little above the knee. You can eyeball this, but remember that it’s better to err on the side of too long—you can always hem a skirt a little shorter, but you can’t add length. If you draw on the fabric, make sure you draw on the “wrong”/inside/ugly part of the fabric, so it doesn’t show on the finished project.

1.5 Optional step: Iron your fabric before sewing. It will look nicer, but also if you don’t feel like it I salute you.

2. Now, cut a rectangular strip of fabric, with the skirt length as the “shorter” side of the rectangle. For the longer part (the width of the skirt), you have a lot of freedom—just remember a longer strip of fabric will make a fuller/poofier skirt! If you want a less full skirt, just make sure that, if you wrap the fabric around your doll, it will close and your doll can still sit.

3. Turn your skirt fabric so the ‘wrong’ side is facing you. Fold the top down. This will be your elastic casing, so make sure that the folded part is big enough for your elastic and a safety pin to fit through! Sew along this piece to make a casing. I try to make my stitches as even as possible, but it’s okay if you make mistakes, especially on the casing, because it’ll eventually be scrunched up and harder to see your errors.

4. Fold the bottom of the rectangle up as well. This can be much smaller if you like! This is going to be your hem. (You might notice that the fold is sharp—I creased it down with my thumbnail, which you might try as well.) These stitches will be more visible but, again, if it’s not perfect that’s okay! Most people don’t notice little mistakes in the grand scheme of things, and you don’t get better unless you do things. Remember: sucking at things is the first step at becoming kinda good at them.

4.5 Optional step: Here I like to iron the hem and casing—I usually use a hair straightener, because it works really well for small projects. If you don’t iron, it’ll look a little weird, but that’s okay!

5. Take your elastic, and wrap it around your doll’s waist where you want the skirt to sit. Cut to fit. Try to avoid too much stretch or too much slack, but because it’s elastic there’s a bit of leeway.

6. Put a safety pin through the end of your elastic, and close it. This will allow you to pull the elastic through the casing without losing it. Send the elastic into the casing, led by the safety pin; you’ll end up sort of inching it through the fabric. Try not to lose the other end of the elastic in the casing! (If you do, you can either fish it out, or pull it all the way through and start over; all is not lost!)

7. Once the unpinned end of the elastic is in the casing, I tend to like to sew it in place with a few messy stitches, making sure the needle goes through the elastic itself a few times. It’s okay if it’s not pretty, as it’s going to be in the back of the skirt and might even be hidden in the seam at the end. Secure is more important than pretty, in this case.

8. Once the elastic is pulled through the casing, with one end secure, sew the “working” end into the casing like you did with the other end. (I actually screwed up initially and sewed the safety pin into the casing, so it looks even messier than usual as I had to do it again and try to get the pin out without having the elastic snap unanchored back into the casing.) Once you remove the pin, you can see the fabric gathering itself due to the elastic. That’s looking suspiciously skirt-like!

9. Fold your fabric in half, nice side facing inward, and put the ends of the fabric together. Now sew the two pieces flat together. This is a great time to “hide” the messy stitches you did when installing the elastic by lining them up with your new stitches.

10. Turn it right side out again. Iron the last seam you did, if you want to.

11. Put the skirt on your doll, with the closing seam in the back. Look, it’s a skirt! You did it! You made a skirt!

12. Take a picture and show all your friends. Tell your mom. Show me if you want!

Additional notes:

Again, you can use pretty much any doll for this. If you’re sewing for an American Girl, or a large plushie or rag doll, you might want to have a wider elastic and have a larger allowance for the hem and casing, both because of sizing issues and also because the elastic might tighten more on a softer body and make the skirt flare out more. You might also be fine with that!

If you’re worried about the skirt riding up as they do sometimes with dolls, you can sew a hidden ribbon from the front to back to curve between your doll’s legs; this will catch the skirt on its way “up” and keep it from rising further. I never do this because I find it harder to dress my dolls that way, but I did a really lazy one for an example (which I immediately removed lol).

If you don’t want to mess with elastic, you could run a ribbon through the casing and just tie it in the back as a drawstring. Don’t sew the casing shut all the way if you do this method! It is also likely to wear on the fabric over time and make it shred.

If you make it a lot longer, you could use this as a super simple dress as well. Ari’s skirt is a little short but you can see how it would make a cute dress, especially with a ribbon belt!

[The small purple cat doll wearing the skirt pulled up into a dress. Left has no ribbon, right has a green ribbon around the waist.]

More experienced sewists might notice that the seams aren’t finished on the inside. That’s because a) this is a super basic beginner project b) I find hand-finished seaming methods tend to be really bulky on a doll scale and c) your doll has no nerves and can’t feel scratchy thread or fabric, and they don’t move, sweat, etc. and so aren’t going to create as much wear on clothing as humans do. You could use Fray Check or glue along the edges of the seams if you’re worried about your fabric fraying, but I only do that with really shreddy fabric.

This post is not sponsored. All items or locations mentioned are for information purposes only. My opinions are my own. Thank you for reading. If you'd like to help out, buy me a coffee!