How To Sew a Straight Knit Skirt for a Fashion Doll

Barbie Doll dressed in knit top, skirt and faux leather boots.
Click here to see how to sew the sweater.

       Knit doll clothes cut from recycled sweaters and socks can be finished in such a way as to prevent future unraveling to some extent. However, you must treat the clipped ends of the knitted stitches with a fabric glue or tacky glue!

       These clipped ends must also be sewed securely, making sure to pass a fine needle back through each row of the knit and firmly sewing shut any stitched seams with several tight lines of straight stitches.

Supply List:

• sleeve from a knit sweater (recycled clothing)
• needle and thread to match
• tacky, white craft glue or no-sew fabric glue
  

Step-by-Step Directions:

1. Cut a clean, laundered sleeve from a knit garment. You can cut two knit skirts from an adult woman's size sweater for one 11 1/2 inch doll.
2. Lay the sleeve out on a clean flat surface to cut. Lay your fashion doll on top of the sleeve to measure the length you would like to cut for her skirt. This measurement will vary given the size of your doll.
3. I cut the top of the skirt from the finished bottom of my sweater's sleeve. That way, the doll's waist will be finished and less likely to unravel over time.
4. Sew a straight stitch down the side seam of the skirt. Repeat this again, layering several seams on top of each other.
5. For the unfinished, clipped end of the skirt, insert a tube or a group of pens to hold the tube of knit open temporarily while tipping the edge of the garment with glue. Let the glue dry this way and then pull the pens or tube out.
6. I used a blanket finishing stitch around the bottom of the skirt on top of the glued edges to ensure the skirt would not unravel for some time.
   

Left, the sleeve of a knit sweater is cut off the main body of the garment in order to make the measuring and cutting
of my doll's skirt easier. Center, here is a photo of pens inserted inside the raw end of a cut sock. This is how I hold
open the clipped edges of a knit garment in order to apply a fabric glue to each end. You don't want the fabric to sit
on top of anything that it might adhere to during the drying time of the glue. Pull these pens out after the glue
has dried. Right, the bottom finished edge of the skirt has an additional seam sewn through its edge on top of the glue. 

Left, here you can see the top edge of the doll skirt is actually the finished portion of the former knit sleeve that
it was cut from. Center, the bottom edge of the skirt is hand-stitched over with a tiny, tight blanket stitch using
 matching thread. Right, this knit skirt will last considerably longer than most, given the attention paid to finishing
 it's edges.