This one, though, is for dolls
Specifically, for a 1961(ish) Ken
A friend had thrifted this doll, in mildly rough shape, and passed him on to me a while ago. I finally fixed him up recently, and found that I didn't have any shirts that quite suited his lanky, non-threatening physique.
A quick shuffle through the doll clothes I do have showed that the pattern I shared for a button-up-style Barbie-size shirt would work, as long as I used smaller seam allowances, which is no problem with the kind of straight stitch foot I use that has a narrow right prong. I also improvised a longer, curved bottom edge when I cut the fabric.
I'm pretty sure that's the basic pattern I used when I made a shirt from this fabric in 2011, only with larger seam allowances for smaller dolls
So it was very much set in my mind that this very nice, very lightweight fabric--which was also a gift--was just right for this kind of shirt.
Then I thought...I have seen shirts, made for high-end sixth scale male fashion dolls, that have front bands and two part stand collars. I have been making a lot of human-size shirts with front bands and two part stand collars, so maybe I could do that in doll scale?
I drew up a slapdash possible pattern piece for the collar stand, and cut the front bands and cuffs and pocket without patterns. I adjusted the collar stand after it was cut, and altered the pattern piece accordingly, so I might have a chance to do this again if I want. (I'm not, at the moment, sure if I want, mostly because I can't imagine using even slightly heavier fabric, so, like a human-size shirt, quilting cotton is not the best choice. I don't have much non-quilting cotton in doll scale prints.)
Since I was going to make this at least vaguely like a proper shirt, I decided the collar, collar stand, and cuffs should be interfaced, or, rather, "interfaced." I wanted the stability of interfacing, but not the bulk that real interfacing would add. I applied fusible seam tape to the appropriate wrong side areas, pressing through silicone baking paper to keep it from fusing to anything else. It seems to have worked.
I chose not to 'interface' the front bands because I didn't want to add any bulk to those, because I was very likely going to do working buttons/buttonholes. The high end doll shirts I had seen before used snaps, or hooks and thread eyes, so I did consider that approach, but I have been sporadically doing working buttonholes in Barbie-scale for about twenty years, so that would have been the least experimental aspect of this project.
I pressed an attached the front bands and collar stand exactly like I do with my human-size shirts.
And 'working buttons' is what I did end up doing, especially since I found that I had seven reddish buttons in the correct size (five for the front, two for the cuffs) (my doll-size button stash is not nearly as deep/reliable as my full-size button stash.)
Me being me, I did not mark them super accurately, and some of the buttonholes ended up more challenging to work the buttons through than others, but they do all technically work. I usually make buttonholes at this scale by setting the stitch length very short and stitching a rectangle with a straight stitch; this time I tried dropping the feed dogs and zigzagging--very narrowly, within the opening of my straight stitch foot--one end, then raising the feed dogs and sewing super short stitches to the end, dropping the feed dogs and zigzagging, then turning the shirt around, raising the feed dogs, and stitching back to the start. I do think this is workable, and would be all the better if, as mentioned, things were marked more accurately than I did it (I just stuck straight pins in at the start and a quarter inch away at the stop.) I did apply Fray Check on all the buttonhole stitching and areas inside where the button holes would be cut open--which I did very carefully with the flat-end X-acto blade--and also to the knots made to secure the buttons.
I even decided to use a pin to help make a shank in the button stitching, although it might have been better if I had used something a little thicker, like a small needle, instead. It's an experiment!
Most of the shortcuts I took happened on the back. The yoke is purely decorative, with only one layer of fabric, and no pleat at the center back where it attaches to it.
I put the cuff opening at the sleeve seam, because, as much as I believe I might have been able to do a continuous band kind of sleeve placket in this size, doing so would have meant that the cuffs would likely have had to have been sewn in by hand, and we all know I'm not doing that.
The last shortcut I took was only folding the hem up once before stitching, instead of twice like I do on human-size shirts. And I absolutely finger pressed it.
The collar stand and front bands worked a lot better--and easier--than I expected. The biggest issues are that I managed to make the sleeves too long, which will not be hard to fix (if I make a shirt like this again), and the neckline needs to be deeper in the back, because, while it's long enough to have room to, theoretically, button in front (I did not make a real buttonhole there, again for thickness reasons), the shoulder seam is doing weird things because it is being forced into the wrong place by the lack of back neck room. Correcting for that could be...fiddly.
If I make a shirt like this again.
(and if I try to adapt it for a modern Ken body...hmm.)
I did want to make jeans specifically for this Ken, but I was going to a friend's house to take doll photos and ran out of time, so he's wearing a pair of jeans I made for...possibly female action figures? They're too big for "Original" Barbie but not big enough for Curvy. I did have to straighten out the hip curve for Ken's skinny body, and they're really low rise, but they look fine styled like this.
Barbie is wearing shorts made with this pattern, and the shirt I made that led to making this pattern.
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