No-Sew Doll's Sundress

Steps for Making a No-Sew Sun Dress

for a Doll

• 1Find a shirt that you don't mind cutting up. This one was stained, so it was headed for the rag-bag. This is a cotton-poly blend that shouldn't fray much. That's good as we don't plan to do any hemming.
  

  

• 2Cut the sleeve off a short- sleeved shirt. Do this by cutting outside the seam where it was attached to the body of the shirt. Trim closely to the seam. Cut along the seam under the arm to end up with a flat piece like this.
  

  

• 3Position the doll in the sleeve with the longer part in front. Wrap the material around the back of the doll. You want some overlap (1/2 inch or 1 inch). Cut off the excess. Since this is a sundress, it is backless.
  

  

• 4Add any trim and decoration that you want for the dress. Here I thought about making it with a sailor theme to use an odd piece I'd been saving. It would have looked good with blue rickrack trim.
  

  

• 5Using a good craft or fabric glue, secure the decorations in place on the doll's sundress. Most glues dry clear, so don't worry about excess glue.
  

  

• 6I used a strip of velcro to hold the back of the doll's sundress in place. The velcro had the sticky back so I just applied it firmly to the fabric.
  PROBLEM: the velcro is bulky so doesn't look the way I wanted. I'm going to replace it with some double-sided carpet tape that I have. It is heavy enough to stick firmly and can be unstuck to change the doll's dress. The carpet tape is much thinner and will not look lumpy.
  

  

• 7Cut some rickrack to use at the top of the dress. It needs to be long enough to easily tie behind the doll's neck. Glue the tie to the dress. Make sure the glue is quite dry before the dress is worn.