Peggy Shows How to Make a Doll Dress from a Knee Sock

I’m sure you all know Peggy by now, she is one of my wonderful customers who loves to experiment when making doll clothes and has shared a number of her creations using ladies socks.  Well, today Peggy shows us how to make a dress for your doll using a knee sock.

Here is the finished dress with two options. The first has a shawl neckline and the second has a turtle neck neckline – this is the same dress, just worn differently.  Peggy explains how to achieve the different looks at the bottom of her instructions.

1. I started with a full knee sock and marked it at about 12″ down from the top, just before it turns into the heel.

2. I cut the sock across at this point creating a 12″ tube

3. Next I pulled the tube onto the doll with the top (finished edge) of the sock located in the spot where I want the bottom of the dress to be. It helps if you try to line up the side fold along the outside of the doll’s arm.

 4. Then I marked the location of the arm, figuring that where I place my pin is where the bottom of the armhole will be.

5. I then took the tube off the doll and folded it in half lengthwise keeping the pin for the armhole in place. Then I cut a snippet out of both pieces together. The hole I made is about 1″ in length and almost 1/4″ in from the outside edge. On my tube I made the bottom edge of the cut about 8″ up from the finished edge of the sock.

6. This is what it looks like on both sides with the little holes cut.

7. The next step is to turn the tube inside out and slip stitch around the edges of each armhole.

I did my best to fold back a little bit of the raw edge to make it as neat as possible. What helped was to put a small rounded wine glass inside to help hold it open and make it easier to sew. Without it my hands cramped up constantly. Oh the joys of getting old and having arthritis in my hands. Anyway I remember when I was a child my mother used to darn socks with a light bulb inside to help make it easier.

When I did the first sweater/dress I tried to zigzag stitch around the edges of the opening but it stretched out of shape and was really difficult to do.  If anyone has a better plan I would love to hear about it. I thought about trying to make a buttonhole type of opening but couldn’t figure out how to logically do it with my sewing machine in such a confined space. Anyway, the slipstitch technique works fine.

I then turned the dress right side out and put it on the doll with one of the little belts I have here. To create the shawl neckline I just pulled the rolled top down over the shoulders. Since the doll does not move her arms it stays in place fairly well. To do the turtleneck top I just let the cut edge of the sock roll up and create the turtleneck.

Thanks so much Peggy for sharing this with us, I love the tip about the wine glass!   I look forward to your next creation.

In the meantime if you are looking for an easy way to make doll clothes then check out my awesome video course for all the help you ever wanted.

Happy Sewing

By Rosie Saw