Matching Girl and 18-Inch Doll Skirts Tutorial

I'll teach you how to make a dolly and jean skirt for your child for less than $5.00!  What you need is a pair of jeans that fit your girl and a skirt from the thrift store.  The skirt does NOT have to fit your child, and you want to buy a larger skirt.  I got this skirt for a quarter, but it's an odd size no girl in the world is going to fit.  So that's probably why it was a quarter.  Nice material, yes?  To make our little outfits, I laid out a pair of doll pants along the waistline of the existing skirt, and estimated where to cut based on the idea that I will need to hem the skirt to prevent fraying.  Keep in mind your material.  This cotton skirt has NO give, and as a result I made the skirt a little too tight.  No matter.  Dolls don't need to breathe!  :)

Next, I cut the skirt like this.  The bottom piece is what you will use for your daughter's denim skirt.  The upper right piece you can use to make hair scrunchies, a doll vest, another doll skirt, or in our case here, an extra front ruffle on the little girl skirt.

I chopped these jeans pretty badly, but oh well.  Cheap jeans with stains or holes in the legs at the thrift store now get new life!  I took the bottom of the thrift store skirt and laid the side seams against the side seams of these jeans.  Right sides together, and the skirt part was upside down so that after it's sewn, you see only the "nice" side of the fabric.  Like this picture below:

As I'm sewing, I estimate how much fabric I have until I get to the next pin and then somewhat haphazardly fold the fabric over as you see here.  This results in a somewhat "ruffled" look when the skirt is completed.  All I did was sew that seam twice.  NO need for a hem at the bottom as that's already done, remember?

For our dolly skirt, I sewed a hem at the bottom so it wouldn't fray.  I also sewed a little hem up about two inches on the sides of what would become the seam of the skirt.  I wanted the doll's legs to be able to move a little, and this will make a side slit.  You will notice that one side of the skirt contains the zipper of the original skirt.  (If you pin well, you could use this same idea with an elastic skirt.) Then?  I sewed the edges together, turned right side out and popped the skirt on the dolly:

She's stylin'!  See how her booties match her skirt?  Yeah!

Here's the result!  A happy girlie with her dolly!