There is always the opportunity to improve your doll dressmaking skills by looking at how others put the designs together.
I am so grateful for the many doll dressmakers who post on blogs and on you tube and Facebook about their sewing experiences with doll clothes.
Many times I have thought "What an obvious method, how could I not have seen that?".
So in that spirit I am sharing a simple way to neaten the collar seam on a button down doll blouse.
For years I have resisted this method because I had an unfounded dislike of additional sewing or cutting out of pieces.
The couture appearance of this finish far out weighs the extra few minutes to set it up and I have no explanation to why I have left it so long to use this seam neatening method.
So, what is the finished result? Here are some shirts I made for my Summer doll clothes capsule. 1806 is a perfect second layer for the Summer clothes capsule.
And what do you need to do to get that finish?
About 4 1/2" of bias strip 1 1/8" wide.
Quite simply, you sew on the collar as instructed then you cut a 1 1/8" wide bias strip that extends about 1/2" into the front facings on each side. Fold the strip in half and press it. Centre it on the collar so the raw edges match the raw edges of the neck seam. Stitch it in place and trim the seam. Press it down over the seam allowance and stitch it down.
All this takes about 5 mins.
I haven't tried this folded bias strip on a round neck blouse yet but that is something I will do when I republish my round neck blouse pattern. At present I am redoing the Open Neck Blouse pattern to include the instructions for the bias facing. Look out for the New! version on Etsy.
You can download the instruction page on creating a bias facing with a collar from my Dropbox.
If you are signed up for my newsletter you can also access it as no.20 in the Newsletter Patterns folder.
Happy Doll Dressmaking,
Val
