Tie Dye Doll Clothes, Guest Post from Linda

Another of the occasional guest posts by Courtney’s mother, Linda.

A short time ago I found to my chagrin that there were 18” dolls in the family that were literally going naked. Poor little things, and me with an excess of fabric. One particular request was for something tie dye. In all my stacks of fabric, I had only one piece of tie dye—a knit shirt in a size youth large with printing on the front.

Shirt to be repurposed

I started with a free online pattern for the t-shirt (Trendy Tee from Pixie Faire). After making a test shirt out of red knit, I redrew the neckline to cover the cloth body of the doll, lengthened it a half inch, and extended the backs to have a facing to which I could attach snaps. I find Velcro to be hard on dolls’ hair.

Version 1, low neckline

Version 2, higher neckline

There wasn’t a lot of fabric in the tie dye shirt, and I had in mind two pairs of leggings and two long t-shirts. Certain sewing standards had to be put aside for this particular project. As luck would have it, both front and back of the shirt were dyed identically. I have no idea how that was accomplished, but it was the key to making this layout work. Each doll shirt front used the center of the spiral, one from the front and one from the back. The front was turned inside out to hide the printing, but that really doesn’t show.

The backs of the shirts look as if they were carefully pieced with an elegant little yoke. Nope—I used the short sleeves and had to include the shoulder seams of the original shirt. Both backs are different, but both are perfectly matched and striking. The cap sleeves were carefully cut so that they continued the colors from the shirt front.

Orange and purple back

Yellow and green back

The leggings were straightforward, although one piece had to be cut inside out to avoid the printing.

Playing with pattern placement

From the one t-shirt, two doll outfits were created. I only have one model in-house, so it was a brief photo shoot. The outfits are now in the mail on their way to their new home in Minnesota. 

Two completed outfits

Update 4/8

The clothes made it to MN. 

Tie dye in MN