The sewing seminar is to learn how to make professional, well fitting doll dresses, for any kind of dolls–antique dolls, child dolls, baby dolls, fashion dolls, any kind of doll clothes where real sewing skills are important. The seminar is offered to any sewer from beginner to advanced. I DO NOT include play dolls and boy dolls in the seminar, as it would be a waste of time and money; however once you leave with your new skills, you can apply them to sewing for any doll you wish.
Each sewing seminar is on a first come, first serve basis, and set up at a convenient time agreed on by both the teacher and the student(s).

LEARN TO SEW BEAUTIFUL, HEIRLOOM QUALITY DOLL DRESSES

In my sewing seminars, you dress several dolls during the seminar–the number depends on how fast you work and what style clothes you make -(for example, little girl or baby doll dresses take less time than dresses for antique or fashion lady dolls). I do put some limits on the kind of costume you can make, as a very complicated one might actually take longer than the seminar!! You will, however, learn the skills you need to make complicated clothing when you are home.

I make suggestions as to what kind and how many dolls you should bring to dress.

You learn not only how to make your own patterns and how to alter existing ones.

You will make the patterns for all the clothes you make in class, beginning with the underwear and completely dressing the doll from the “skin” out.

You will learn little tricks like how to easily make socks for little girl dolls.

We don’t dress boy dolls, American Girl dolls or Barbie dolls in class. My classes are for making  heirloom  quality doll dresses, more dress up rather than “play” clothes. If you want to make simple play clothes for dolls, you really don’t need sewing lessons, they are fast and easy and there are many patterns available for them.

I like students to leave here knowing how to do more complicated doll dresses that fit well and look wonderful, and how to take any pattern or their own and make an original garment from it, or how to look at a picture of a dress and develop their own pattern for it. If the student only came and made simple play clothes they would not learn this important stuff.
You can choose which kind of doll clothes you are interested in–from antique dolls to baby dolls to child dolls to lady dolls, and you can learn to make clothes for more than one type of doll in one seminar! One student made a French style dress with pleated skirt and a bonnet for an antique doll, an organdy dress and bonnet for a composition baby doll, and a formal for her 1950s Miss Revlon doll, all in one seminar. These were three very different styles she was able to process and take home knowledge about.
When you do the different styles, you learn in the process how different fabrics and trims are suitable for different era and type of doll as well as which fabrics are not suitable and why.

I am always happy to answer any emails and questions! Just use our CONTACT US form to keep the spammers from getting our email addresses–yours and mine.

You will learn how to create your own basic pattern for each doll that you can change slightly to make dresses that look entirely different, as well as make new patterns of your own style.