Ribbon Doll Dress

Or how to spend a couple hours procrastinating with your daughter when you are sick of working on the 20GB of wedding photos you have to post process and send out to people.

In another couple years I’m sure I’ll be called on for doll clothes, right now, honestly, Rebecca doesn’t much care and mostly wants to pull them off, but it’s good practice. And we picked up four little girl dolls for her doll house at a flea market this weekend, and one of them didn’t have a stitch on. That’s my excuse.

Next time I’m going to use cotton though, this filmy stuff was awful to work with. It’s nice and thin, which was why I got it many years ago when I thought I wanted to make dolls, easier to make clothes to scale when you aren’t using really thick fabric, but Rebecca isn’t that picky, and I shouldn’t be either. That or I need to singe the edge to keep it from fraying. Or just glue trim on. I tried to use a turned ribbon binding for the hem, but I pulled some threads sticking off the edge after I stitched the bottom of the ribbon, and then the seam was no good in a couple spots. Oops. So I ended up fixing it with some fabric glue. The ribbon bodice ended up needing some glue to keep it from fraying too. I didn’t cut it long enough to fold both edges, and really that makes it too bulky anyway. So I put a tiny bit of glue around one edge, and then wrapped a narrow gauzy ribbon around it. I should have done that for both edges. And the velcro. I’m tempted to try an all-glue dress next time.

But really, what’s with dresses, I should be making pants! Okay, I should be making wrap dresses right now, because anything else is a bit much for Rebecca to get dolls feet and hands through. It was sweet though, while I was sewing the dress Rebecca wanted me to open a bag of buttons, and after a suggestion she started sorting them by color, and then found a narrow ribbon out of my ribbon drawer and started stringing them by herself. I was surprised that she could get the ribbon through the buttons. She got frustrated after a handful of buttons, and I put a needle on the ribbon for her.

And now I need to see how many more photos I can tweak before I need to cook dinner.