Things I Love: Lillestoff Organic Cotton

I have a weakness for Lillestoff Organic knit fabric. There is really no logical way to justify my Lillestoff purchases.

Yes, it is a soft beautiful cotton knit fabric. Yes, it is the perfect weight and has the perfect amount of stretch. Yes, the colors are gorgeous. Yes, it is a dream to sew with. Yes, it is made for children. And of course, it is organic.

But it is made in germany and it is not even a reasonable price in Germany and I am paying to ship it here.

I use it to sew doll leggings, capris, t-shirts and pajamas. But I can't pass the cost along.

I told you there was no way to justification. Just enjoy it like I do!

Lillestoff leggings peaking out

Lillestoff T-Shirt

Things I Love: Crosshatch Fabric

I have a collection of crosshatch fabric.

Maybe it's my fine arts background, or maybe it's my love of good basics, or probably both, but either way, I love this fabric.

I often prefer to us these almost solid fabrics, instead of a true solid. To keep things lively, but not too busy. I use it for PeterPan collars, lining, hair flowers, pockets and waist bands. 

There are several lines of crosshatch fabric. My pile happens to be from the Alexander Henry Heath Collection, which is discontinued but still available at Cias Palette, Fabric. com, and on Etsy.

But there are other lines of similar crosshatch fabric.

Architextures by Carolyn Friedlander for Robert Kaufman is also crosshatch, but on the diagonal, which is lovely. Right now a half yard set is on sale at Fabricworm. 

Timeless Treasures makes a line called Sketch that is similar. They also make a diagonal version called Hatch.

The best way to find lots is to do a search for crosshatch fabric on Etsy.

Having a small collection of this on hand is useful for doll clothing, quilting or sewing gifts. Below you can see a few ways I have used it just in the past week.

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Liberty of London will be Phoebe's Spring "Thing"

My mother introduced me to Liberty of London when I was little. After a trip to London, she made my sister and I matching Liberty of London smocked dresses and my father got a matching tie. 

When I first started Phoebe and Egg I wondered, was Liberty too fancy for doll dresses? 

You can guess how I answered that from my sweet stack of Liberty fabric below.

Last month while visiting family in London, we just happened to find ourselves near their shop. I was surprised by how many things they sold besides their fabric—housewares, clothing, Rowan Yarn, sewing notions.

I recently cut into my Liberty fabric and started sewing. I am smitten. It is divine and it's weight makes it wonderful for doll clothes.

So be on the look out for a Liberty collection for Phoebe this spring.

Four Ways to Make Ruffled Trim: Part 1

Two things right off the bat. One, there are probably more than 4 ways to make ruffled trim, the kind like I have on the skirt above. And two, there is a reason I did not call the blog post "How to gather" fabric. Although most of these methods involve a form of gathering,  three of the four methods I would only use on decorative elements, because you cannot control the length and degree of the gathering on the finished product.

That's okay if you are making trim.

one inch strips

My ruffled trim is made from strips of cotton print, one inch wide and 45" long, cut with the rotary cutter, by merely slicing of the end of a fabric piece, one inch at a time.

I'll cover one way in each post. This post is all about the gathering foot. I think this is by far the easiest way to make this trim. You'll see why in the video.

The gathering foot shown below is the one from Bernina, #16. But most brands make one, Janome, Brother, Singer, etc..  They all look the same. Once and awhile it is called a shirring foot. They seem to cost between $20-$22. 

The gathering foot.

To use this foot, you will need to set your stitch length to the longest stitch. If you want less gathering, shorten the stitch a bit.

Place your fabric under the foot, do a stitch or two backwards to secure and then just zoom right ahead, gathering/ruffling as you go.

How to use a gathering foot to make ruffled trim

And in about a minute or two you have your trim! I love this foot!

Finished trim

Doll Dressmaking Series: Where to find cute trim

I love trim. As you can see I have a bit. Before I get into choosing and sewing on various trims, I thought I'd share some of my favorite places to buy trim. The photo below are the trims I tend to use most often for doll clothing.

Next in this series, a series about sewing on various dolls trims.

Where to find cute trim for doll clothing

When shopping for ribbon, remember often one yard will cover trimming three doll dresses.

Velvet Ribbon comes in all sorts of widths. 

• MJ Trim has the largest variety of widths and colors, but not the cheapest. You must buy a minimum of five yards.
• JKM Ribbon sells spools of ten yards of 3/8" and 5/8" the two best widths for doll clothes for roughly five dollars and has a sufficient selection. 
• Create for Less has 1/2" width spools for $3.39, but a spool is only 3 yards. 
• Farmhouse Fabrics has an amazing selection, but the ribbon starts at $145 a yard. If you are into quality classic sewing materials, you can lose yourself on this site.

Rick Rack, posted about this awhile back but here are the sources again.

Wright's Rick Rack (polyester) sold in the little cellophane cover packets is available many places online. It comes in over 20 colors. You can order Wright's here:

• JKM Trims and Ribbons
• Joanne's

Cotton Rick Rack can be found at:

• Farmhouse Fabrics
• Harts
• Elegant Stitches

Rolls of Rick Rack (polyester)

• Create for Less carries a cool brand called Cheep Trims in addition to having Wrights and lots of other cool stuff.

Crochet edging, sometimes called Cluny

• Farmhouse Fabrics, wide range, quality and there more expensive, but sometimes sell bags of assorted edging cheaply in their barn closeouts.
• Debs Lace and Trims: Lots of crochet edging, very inexpensive. have a whole cluny section.
• Ebay: amazing selection and prices for white crochet trim, which is my favorite. 

Jacquard Ribbon:

This is fairly easy to find, but what is hard to find is the narrower widths of doll clothing. You can play with scale, which can be cute, and use larger sizes. Here are a few places you can find some:

• MJTrim again.
• Farmhouse Fabrics. This is where the cherry trim in the photo is from. Huge selection and a lot of tiny ones. Not inexpensive though.
• Fabric.com has a fairly large selection.

Mini Pompoms!

• Fabric.com has a few colors at about a little under a dollar a yard. 
• Create for Less best source if you want a large supply of mini pom-poms. 36 yards for $18. Lots of colors. larger pompoms too.
• Etsy, lots of people sell them, often a few dollars for five yards.

Bias Trim:

I make my own. simple to do, and you will always have an endless variety and sizes. I'll post about this later.

Ruffle Trim:

I bought this particular one in bulk wholesale from Mokuba, Japanese trim dealer in NYC. I had to buy 30 yards, but I love it and use it all the time. If you ever find yourself in the garment district, stop in. You need a business card to get in, but they are not that fussy about what business. Lots of ruffled trims in lots of sizes and colors. Maybe it's a thing in Japan.

Farmhouse Fabrics has some, but they are not small.

Grosgrain Ribbon: 

I love the simplicity of grosgrain ribbon. It is easy to find.

• Create for Less has a huge selection, which includes stripes and other designs.
• Debs Lace and Trims: It's not a separate section, you have to look through other sorts of ribbons too.
• Fabric.com lots starting at about 20 cents a yard.
• Thread Art: About $2.00 for a 20 yard roll. You really can't do better than that. If you need 20 yards.
• Etsy, easy to get smaller quantities.

In the next few posts in this series, I'll show you how I sew trims on doll clothes.

Doll Dressmaking: Useful Tools

Later this week I will be uploading a basic doll dress base for us to start the lessons with. I will use this base to teach some sewing techniques and some basic pattern drafting.

To even begin, you will most likely need to make some very rudimentary adjustments to ensure the pattern base fits your doll. So before altering this base pattern, I thought I'd show you my favorite pattern making and altering tools. 

The most basic tool: a measuring tape. You will need to know lengths and circumferences of various parts of your doll before you make adjustments.

Basic

You will need to alter pattern pieces. This is best done by tracing with a pencil and tracing paper. Lots of erasing. More tracing. And sometimes getting a bit more accurate with graph paper. And when you think all is good, drawing a clean final version with a medium tipped black marker.

kind of basic

Although you can use tracing paper for your pattern pieces, I prefer freezer paper. You can trace onto it. And then you can iron the pieces onto your fabric for accurate and easy cutting. You can even copy onto it. Amazon sells sheets that go through your copier, which allows for easy replicating, enlarging and reducing. You can also just get a roll at the grocery store for a lot less money.

luxury items

Coming in the next few days...the base dress pattern pieces for a variety of dolls. Adobe illustrator and I are becoming friends (sort of) as I try to create these.

A Basic Course in Doll Dress-Making

Thinking about starting to sew doll clothes?

Already sew doll clothes but would like to learn a few techniques?

Have a few doll clothes patterns but would like to have more?

Have a doll you'd like to sew for but do not have a pattern?

Through a series of blog posts, I am going show you how to make a few doll dress patterns and walk you through a number of doll clothing sewing techniques that I use.

We will start with making a base pattern to work off of.  I will provide a base pattern for the following dolls:

Phoebe (of course)

Toddler Phoebe (of course again)

American Girl Doll

A Standard 16" Waldorf Doll

A Sasha Doll

I will then help you resize to fit your doll.

And then once we all have base dresses, I will teach you how to use that base to create a lot of other dress patterns. Along the way, as we sew the dresses, I will show you a few basic doll dress making techniques. Nothing fancy, but enough so you can make a number of kinds of dresses.

Are you ready? By the end of the week, I should have the base patterns ready to go. I'm still an Adobe Illustrator novice, but I'm getting better at the pattern tracing.

How to Use Rick Rack as an Edging

I love to use rick rack as an edging on doll clothing. It's simple and sweet. It is also easy to come by and comes in so many colors. It is very easy to do. Follow the steps I've laid out below.

1. Sew rick rack down the center line onto the edge you are trimming. You do not need to match the thread to the rick rack color. This stitching will not show.

Here's how your edges should look now. This is your first pass of adding the edging.

Next you want to fold that edge over and stitch the rick rack down as you go. I recommend using your needle down setting, if you have one. You could fold it over and iron it first, but if your rick rack is not 100% cotton, your iron needs to be at a low temperature or you need a cloth on top, or it will melt and burn. Not good.

It helps to hold the rick rack down as you are sewing. No comments on my nails or nail polish. This is better than my nails often look.

Below is what it looks like done. At the top of this post you can see the finished shorts. Super easy and lots of possibilities!

Also on my blog: Everything you need to know about rick rack

Almost everything you need to know about rick rack

It's easy to like rick rack. It's simple, fun, retro and even a bit kitchy.

The trim, also known as ric-rac, is a flat braid woven to form zigzags and used  as trimming often on clothing. Although it exudes a retro look and was extremely popular in the 1970s, it actually goes back to almost a century earlier and was a zigzag crochet braid used to decorate collars and cuffs. 

If you sew doll clothes, ric rac works on many levels:

1. It's cheerful and seems to belong on children's clothing, including children's doll's clothing.
2. It comes in many sizes. There's ric rac for Blythe clothes (1/8th of an inch from peak to peak) and for the American girl. You can play with scale, small ric rac on larger clothes, larger ric rac on small clothes. Or mix two sizes. Lots of ways to be creative 
3. It comes in many colors. again, lots of ways to be creative. Same color, different sizes. Different colors, same size, different everything. You get the idea.
4. It's easy to get.
5. It's inexpensive compared to other trims.
6. It's easy to sew on (more on this further on).
7. It's the original chevron fabric.
8. It's a classic.

How to Sew Rick Rack:

For doll clothing rick rack can either be placed within the fabric. For this a straight machine stitching line through the middle of the fabric (see image below) works fine. The only time this does not work is for larger rick rack over 3/4" which most likely won't appear on doll clothes.

I use thread the same color as the rick rack for the upper thread and the same color as the fabric in the bobbin. That way your stitching line is nearly invisible on both front and back.

Rick rack can also be applied to the edges of doll clothing or quilts. This is a bit more complicated and for a blog post in the near future. 

Even on tiny rick rack there is enough room to stitch through the center.

Types of Rick Rack:

There are three basic types of rick rack: cotton, polyester and nylon. The three materials have a different look, feel and capacity for withstanding heat. Cotton rick rack is soft, can be directly ironed and is the hardest to come by. Polyester Rick Rack is a bit stiffer and cannot be ironed directly. I place a cotton cloth between the rick rack and the iron. It can burn and melt if over heated or heated a second too long. Nylon rick rack, the least expensive, is designed for scrapbooking, not sewing, and melts into fumes even near the iron. I discovered this the hard way. Our smoke detectors were still blaring an hour later when dinner guests arrived. 

If you aren't sure what type of rick rack you have, iron a small piece at medium temp for a few seconds before stitching it to something you don't want to ruin.

Sources of Rick Rack:

Wright's Rick Rack (polyester) sold in the little cellophane cover packets is available many places online. It comes in over 20 colors. You can order Wright's here:

• JKM Trims and Ribbons
• Joanne's

Cotton Rick Rack can be found at:

• Farmhouse Fabrics
• Harts
• Elegant Stitches

Rolls of Rick Rack (polyester)

• Create for Less carries a cool brand called Cheep Trims in addition to having Wrights and lots of other cool stuff.

And for fun some rick rack craft tutorials. Thanks Ucreate!

When it is the End for a Favorite Fabric

Those of us who sew doll clothes work with small pieces of fabric. Not exactly scraps, but fat quarters, strips and margins of larger fabric pieces. When you have a half yard or more, you can stash some of it for another dress later. Maybe you can squeeze two dresses into a half yard and there is still enough for a shirt, a lining or capris. But eventually you are left with unusable scraps. Pretty scraps, but only the very thrifty will put these to use.

Most of the time, this inevitable using up of our stash is okay. It actually feels good. After all, that is what a stash is for. Right?

Not always. There are always some things we want to both use and hang on to. Those favorite fabrics. The ones you are torn about using and torn about not using.

Today I used the last of one of my favorite fabrics. I bought it a while back. Maybe even as long ago as five years ago. A clean white cotton with bright yellow, red and pink cherries splashed across it. Yes it made a sweet dress. But what I have left could barely be a lining. 

There's always the hope that there might be more. Somewhere.

There are a few places you can check, but you will need to check the selvedge to find the exact name of your fabric.

Etsy, a search in the supplies section

Ebay. You can also set eBay up to save your search and email you when items that match are listed.

Quiltshops, will search over a hundred online quilt shops. I've had very good luck with this.

But sometimes, the fabric is gone, everywhere. It wasn't just my favorite fabric, but many people's favorite fabric.