Making doll dresses

This past week, I worked on a couple of doll dresses. Well, they're so much better than my first attempt. Mainly because I was serious this time. :D I had my orange tracing chalk handy, to add to the seriousness of the whole activity. Many of the women in my family sew. My grandma's sisters are accomplished seamstresses, my mom sewed a lot too. And now my sister is making her career in sewing. I remember as a kid watching my grannies and mom sew, they used the orange chalk to trace. (But not my sister -  she uses fancy sewing stuff) So I just had to buy my own because I mean business!

I made a short dress for Sabrina using this floral fabric and a few strips of color-coordinated ribbons.

I was quite happy with this dress, though there's still a lot of room for improvement. As you can see here, the skirt's seam is actually at the front of the dress :D Luckily the shirring makes it less obvious.

This is the beginnings of a maxi tube top dress for Candice. Cutting the fabric was pretty straightforward. I just cut a rectangular piece of fabric to her measurements. What proved to be absolutely tricky when making this dress was getting the tiny garter through the equally tiny casing I sewed on the top part of the dress. After about 4 tries and throwing a bit of a fit, I finally got that darn elastic through.

 

Okay, so time for finished products. Here's Sabrina in her dress.

And here's Candice. I just hand-stitched the ribbon to the hem. The fabric is pretty sheer so it's peekaboo undies for now. Hehe. I still have to buy fabric for the lining.