Gathered Skirts

One of the most challenging things about making doll dresses, is getting the gathers to hang properly. The first thing to consider is the choice of fabric. I'm currently working on my Fashion sized dolls, which are more or less one quarter scale. Which means that any fabrics used for their clothes should ideally also be one quarter scale. As in one quarter the thickness. But it's almost impossible to find quarter thickness fabric. It's hard enough finding them the right colour and/or pattern. So the best thing to look for is as thin a natural fibre fabric as possible.

​ I went through my box of tartans and plaids fabrics, and the only one in an appropriate scale plaid in a good colour was a grey synthetic. I thought I'd try it anyways.

Even washed, it wasn't really draping properly. It was screaming "doll dress"!!

I wanted something better, which meant a trip to Value Village. There I chose a blue plaid, man's shirt, and a pair of thin gray/green flannel pajama pants. I took them home, washed them, and cut them apart, so I'd have flat fabric to work with.

​First I made up a skirt from the darker plaid. The skirt was gathered from a 60" length of fabric, and the gathers really stood out.  It screamed "Doll Dress"!!  I hadn't looked at the label to see what the fibre content was, and was hoping I'd not made a mistake. But the real test is what it looks like after I soak it and let it dry, laying it crinkled on a heat register. It looked much better.....

Then I made a skirt out of the lighter green/gray plaid. Again it was 60" of fabric gathered onto a yoke at the waist, so the gathers wouldn't all be crowded around the waist, making it look too high. 

I knew this skirt would respond better to being wet, so decided to stain it right away. After all, if the skirt is being worn in the wilderness with no chance of ever getting washed, it's not going to be all pristine, like it was just made from brand new fabric. So I mixed up some diluted brown paint in textile medium, and dipped the bottom edge of the wet skirt into it....letting it soak in....

Squeezed out as much moisture as I could, then laid it over the heat register to dry....

After it dried, I put it back on Bianca.....

 The gathers were a much better scale now, and the dirty hemline added a touch of realism. I could even go a step further and lightly sand the bottom edge of her skirt, to really rough it up, but this looked good enough for now.

*Note - it really is better to AIR dry clothes that have been stained, since the colouring dries more evenly that way. For some reason the heat from the furnace heat register bakes the colour darker and more uneven. But I didn't care. I was impatient, and it was way too cold outside to hang anything to dry out there. In fact I just heard on the radio that today is the coldest it's been on this day since they started keeping records. So the heat register it was!