Birkat Chaverim Blog

Although I have not posted recently about the chug (workshop/class), we are meeting again this year and are working on a variety of projects, mostly not doll clothing. Some participants are working on animal shaped ouch relievers (you know, those things that sit in the freezer and when you get an ouch, relieve the ouches) and others are working on scarves, some intended as Hanukkah presents. I’ll post photos when they are finished (assuming I remember to photograph them before they get taken home.)

Here are a few clothing items that the girls made in the meantime:
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Just wanted to let anyone interested know that I haven’t been posting about doll clothing projects because we are on hiatus until after the holidays. We will probably be meeting on another day this year as well. Probably Tuesdays, but we have not decided yet.
Anyone who would like to know about the class and when it meets should contact me via the contact form on the shop site. For more information about what we have been doing in the classes check out the posts in the classes section.

I wanted to post pictures of some of the finished projects from the doll clothing classes. The girls are very creative and are always coming up with new ideas. I don’t have pictures of all the works made in the class, but I’d like to share what I can.

Finished shorts:
Build a bear sheep is sporting a happy birthday hat. The shorts are made from an old t-shirt (seen in other posts). I like how the tail part of the shorts came out-

Shoes:
Patterns is based on a Martha Stewart baby bootie pattern and modified for the doll. Ribbon was added to make ballet slipper type shoes.

Jacket:
This was completely designed by a participant based on a jean skirt in our scrap pile. It came out really well and did not require alot of sewing.

On a different topic- one participant designed a “Dress a boy” felt board.

An earlier project design by a participant who wanted to do something without any sewing whatsoever.

These are not all the projects, but unfortunately I didn’t manage to photograph everything. Some participants have also made foam visors in addition to other clothing items that didn’t make it into pictures.

For other examples of doll and bear clothing and accessory projects see some of the earlier posts:
A Doll Clothing Chug is Born
Doll Clothing Making Course Week One
Doll Clothing Chug Week Three
Barbie Gets a New Hat

Here are a few comments and suggestions for people who might be interested in running a doll clothing workshop using materials such as socks. These are based on things learnt in the course of our chug/class.
When cutting holes in socks or other materials, advise participants to make sure that the holes are smaller than the bear or doll arm or leg. If the holes are too large too much bear or doll will stick out  (think tails, sleeveless shirts or bathingsuits.)
Class participants tend to be enthusiastic but its important to stay on top of basic instruction such as how to sew.
When making a patterns, be sure to fold the paper first, and leave space for seam allowances. Be sure to explain seam allowances. Once the pattern is traced and pinned, make sure to reiterate about seam allowances and where to sew.
We havent been reenforcing the holes in the sock outfits, but it probably would be a good idea for long term use. I have been mentioning this to students.
Dont forget tail holes in build a bear outfits!

Try not to rush on the cutting. The pieces tend not to come out the same size that way. This is particularly true for cutting with t-shirts.
Crochet and knitting has a large learning curve. You have to know that your group is willing to learn that skill. I was going to do crochet flowers, but an experiment with a simple daisy leads me to think that the time is not ripe. I would like to do cable and finger crochet designs. I thought perhaps finger crocheted scarves might work as well as felt baseball caps.
Try a variety of things, some students who don’t thrive with sewing do amazing things with other media such as drawing.Have a basic structure but allow for student creativity. It leads to new ideas.

Here is a tutorial for the build a bear shoes based on the Martha Stewart pattern. We decided that the straps should be removed since they complicated the project. Since the Build a Bear needed more coverage on top and has wide legs an extra length of felt would be needed for the strap to go all the way around.

1. & 2. Use your pattern that you created (see previous post for more information about that) to measure and cut your shoe upper and your shoe sole. In this case the center section was cut out for a strapless shoe.

3. Pin the upper and lower pieces together wrong sides out, leaving a seam allowance. I found it easiest to start from the top center of the shoe since the back can be difficult to sew for a beginner sewer.

4. Turn right side out.

5. Embellish with whatever you’d like. In this case a crocheted flower was added. However, any type of embellishment can be added-  buttons, felt decorations, ribbon or whatever you can dream up. I’ll post some other shoe examples in another post. Sorry you can’t see the crocheted embellishment, I forgot to take a final picture and the shoes have already been sent to someone as a birthday present. You can see something similar for dolls in this post.

Week five we worked on accessories which we continued week six and seven. I found several baby bootie patterns for us to experiement with and also found a cute viking shoes tutorial from a blog called Earth and Living and its use with children here and thought i would give the girls ideas and a choice in what to make. I also offered the electrical tape shoes option for the young women “allergic” to sewing. Surprisingly, everyone chose to make the booties- we made booties based on a pattern from Martha Stewart.
I started them off by creating shoe bottoms based on the shape of the bear or doll foot (this week we had one new student who brought a doll). I showed them the pattern, cut pattern pieces and a finished shoe that i made for my daughter’s doll. We discussed adding seam allowance to their doll foot size and I showed them how the pattern piece would look.
No images this post but hopefully next time.

I think I neglected to mention that this doll clothing making chug takes place in Jerusalem. I thought I would mention it now.
For the fourth week I originally thought we would do accessories because of the smaller amount of sewing required. in the end one girl decided she wanted to do a skirt and top (minimal sewing) and the others finished off their shorts. I on the other hand made slippers out of cardboard and electrical tape for my daughter’s doll.

I am getting more requests about the chug. I got a call from a mother who would like to bring two girls, a sister who wants to send her sister and the mother of two sisters. I think if I get all the extra girls, I will try to enforce a everyone working on the same sort of project at the same time rule so that i will be able to help everyone with the same sorts of problems at the same time. I think i will also enforce a clean up regime so i dont end up cleaning everything up.
I have been warning the girls who don’t have the patience to sew that some of their workarounds are not going to work in the long run. Gluing foam accents onto fabric with “Elmer’s glue” is not a long term solution.

Continued working on the patterns and sewing. This week some of the girls brought Build a Bear clothing they already had and interestingly enough, one of our patterns turned out to be quite similar to theirs. Its good that she brought the clothing, because we almost forgot to leave holes for the tails!

This week one girl decided to take a break on the sewing to design her short’s applique. She was inspired by an Old Navy shirt that my daughter outgrew with a cute knitted cat applique. The cat had very cute button eyes. Note the applique in the photograph, as well as the in process pair of shorts. I also included a photo of a tshirt with the cutouts where the shorts pieces would have been.
Next week the plan is to finish up the pants and start skirts, I think.

I forgot to mention that although baby and kids socks generally are too small for Build a Bears, they do make great appliques. The girls were quite creative in what they wanted to use in their designs. The second week, some of the girls finished up their projects from the week before. One girl decided to bring in felt to make a dress and headdress (no pictures, she already took it home.)

The rest of us started to design our own patterns for Build a Bear shorts. I showed them the shorts I had made for my daughter and the little applique I had topstitched onto them. I also brought out a bunch of her clothes, because baby and toddler clothing always have such cute embellishments and I thought it would spark ideas. I brought out several pairs of shorts so we could look at how they were constructed. Then I brought out paper. We looked at the shorts and estimated how much smaller we would want them to be. We also estimated a length and where the crotch should be. Then we designed the cut for our shorts. In the first pattern we forgot to add seam allowance, but we kept that in mind when we measured the fabric. The other patterns included seam allowance.

Then we got to measuring our patterns against old tshirts. What I love about this is that given the girls are not in love with a huge amount of hand sewing, we save time on the hem and sides of the pants.

We opened the pieces and pinned them together. The idea is for the girls to sew the center seams and then open the pants again and sew up the crotch.

Sock bathing suit

I showed the girls the Barbie clothing (see post on birth of chug for picture)  and Build a Bear outfit (currently unphotographed.) Barbies have a really large selection of clothing choices- baby socks make great shirts, children’s socks have great colors and patterns and are easy skirts or pants. With a little sewing men and women’s socks become sophisticated dresses, sweaters or pants. The top of socks can become barrettes or winter hats. In another post I’ll show an example of a hat.
The Build a Bears (or other bears of that size) are larger- they seem to come in two sizes.

Glove as Barbie skirt

When the girls were looking for socks to use for their clothing in the pile of socks, I asked them to make sure that they pulled the socks over the bears hips to be sure that their outfit was going to fit. Mostly that left us with black or white sport socks, but we did have an occasional find of other color winter sport socks or children’s socks with extra stretch. The bear sporting the bathing suit was lucky enough to encounter a stretchy child’s sock. There was also a cute grey sports sock which was made into a dress. Most of the girls did not finish their outfits in the first week.