Sewing Shirt for 60cm doll

Yay! Well done! It looks great

Don't forget, it can always be unpicked and redone.

Teddy

 

Looks good!

 

Well done. I'm trying to do that on a jacket sleeve for a Victorian suit I'm making for one of my SD girls (combining two coordinating fabrics - one from an old shirt, one from old pyjamas).

Teddy

 

{laugh!} It may be a while - it's one of my many unfinished projects. The skirt has been done except for the waistband for at least five years, the jacket body and lining made up and waiting for the collar and sleeves to be added for nearly as long.

The dangers of being a butterfly crafter - there's always a new project to flit off to, leaving the current project unfinished.

Teddy

 

Oh, I have knitting UFOs as well. Lots of one-doll-sock-awaiting-it's-pair and doll jumpers needing their fastenings, or the ends sewing in, or the last few rows knitted... etc.

Teddy

 

Seaming together for me. I'll knit as much as possible in the round and will pick up stitches along the edge and knit the next part directly into place rqther than seam two bits together wherever possible.

I was once asked to knit some dolls swimsuits form a vintage pattern for a doll-magazine photo-shoot, and I rewrote the pattern so I could knit the whole thing in one go instead of knitting five individual flat pieces and sewing them all together at the end.

Teddy

 

It looks very nice.
You can always unpick the hem.
I usually hem by hand. First I iron and steam press the hem in place, then I hem with a slip stitch for a more or less invisible hem, catch stitch for a slightly stretchy hem or I do a tiny rolled hem on thin or sheer fabrics.
There is a little tutorial here: 5 ways to hand stitch a hem | Colette Blog

 

Practice on scraps and offcuts until you get the feel of the technique of feeding the fabric into the foot as you go.

It's worth the effort. For me it sped up the sewing of hems on ruffles no end, and when I'm making 10 dresses like this, that's a real advantage:


Teddy

 

I find it's hardest to get started, and that you need to sort of hold the fabric edge slightly over to the left (with your right hand) as you're feeding it into the foot, and use your left hand to steer the mani body of the fabric as you stitch. It's easier to keep it curling the right way ionce you get the technique down.

Allso, if you;re doing somethign that's sewn into a tube (like a skirt hem or a ruffle) stop sewing just before you get back to the start point, leave a long tail of thread when you remove it from the machine and use that thread to hand-sew the last few stitches to meet up with where you started... it's neater than trying to end on the machine when the start has already been curled and sewn-down.

Teddy

 

No doubt there was a knack to doing it. Probably kept the edge pulled over witht he left hand while steering the fabric with it too. Perhaps rolled hem feet weren't available until electric machines were more prevalent, or perhaps onlythose with treddle-machines used them...

Teddy

 

I have a rolled hem foot for my hand crank machine, you just use the left hand to steer and keep the fabric in place and stop with the needle down each time you need to adjust anything. Slow and easy does it.

 

Sometimes it helps to use the point of a pin or the tip of an unpicker to feed the fabric through the foot until you can lower the needle to hold the start of the roll in place while you lower the foot and prepare to start sewing.

And, have you tried rolling the edge of the fabric back and forth with your fingers to encourage it to start rolling in the right direction before putting it under the machine and feeding it into the foot?

EDITED TO ADD : There's a lovely clear demo of how to roll th edge at 0..55 in this video:
(it's also a very good demo of how to hand sew a rolled hem, should you ever need it - Burnley and Trowbeidge stitch videos are all very usefuul for hand-sewing techniques)

Teddy

 

But the stitches show on the backside when hemming like that.
When going to all the trouble of sewing a tiny rolled hem by hand I would have opted for a nearly invisible seam instead. I do my rolled hems by hand like the video on this page: JuliaBobbin: TWO Tutorials - Couture Rolled Hem + Hand Pick Stitch AND a Silk Slip Dress

When using the hemmingfoot on your macine you can use a scrap piece of fabric as a leader before you start your rolled hem, that way you can grab the leader to guide the fabric through the hemmingfoot at the beginning of the seam.

 

That's right - they did in 18th Century clothing which is what the video is aimed at.

If you don't want them to show (as much - they'll always be visile to some extent) you use finer thread, that colour matches your fabric and just adjust your technique so a smaller amount of the outer fabric (just a thread or two) is picked up by the stitch.

Teddy

 

Some days go like that - I meant to spend the day working on an 18th Century wrapping gown for myself, having dyed some linen for thelining the other day, and ended up gettign caught up in unpickign a pile of cotton shirts to upcycle the fabric into dolls clothes, then ironing all the pices to put away in my stash (and I only got half way through that - so much for the planned productive day).

Teddy