Do you like to sew doll clothes?
I turned my love of sewing into a design business that has been earning passive income since 2014.
Introduction
I have been designing doll clothes since 2015. I love making my doll clothes patterns available to the doll dressmaking community. Substack, with its paid subscription feature, has enabled me to rebuild my pattern club. You can benefit from my many skills gained over the years and easily create and enjoy beautiful doll clothes for your 18” dolls.
💼 The birth of the pattern business.
I had just retired and found myself getting involved with blogging and patchwork on the internet. Some ladies were drawing patterns for patchwork and quilts and making them available as PDFs to download.
Fast forward a few years and I decided I could sell patterns because I loved everything about the “new” PDF download craze. All I can remember about choosing to design doll clothes patterns is that it came about gradually over several months. Then I was all out into creating patterns and sewing up the designs then writing instructions.
It sounds pretty straight forward but I spent about 5 years learning new skills. I am still learning!
I taught myself:
Illustrator,
Mailchimp,
Blogger,
Teachable,
Keynote,
Numbers,
Pages,
Google Docs,
Dropbox,
Doll clothes sewing of course.
I learnt about:
Craftsy,
Etsy,
branding,
audiences,
copy writing,
SEO,
title creation,
blog outlines,
time blocking,
batch creating,
Youtube video making,
Facebook groups,
Facebook Pages.
hero stories,
asking people to buy my patterns.
I learnt how to create:
a successful newsletter with 2000 subscribers (closed because it didn’t match my vision anymore),
My own FB group (now with 1000+ members),
My own FB page (now with 1000+ followers),
landing pages,
header images,
a book keeping spreadsheet.
I got an ABN and I hired an accountant to do my tax return. There was nothing slow about my life but I loved every minute of it until I didn’t, and I changed nearly everything about my business.
I realised one day that I had achieved all the goals that I had set out to achieve.
I had taught myself to be a business person. I had a steady passive income. I had an emergency savings account. I was no longer afraid of dealing with customers and my business was thriving. I was a self made success in every way I could think of.
The business was just starting to become ‘things I should do to keep my customers happy’. I took a good look at what I was doing and I decided it was time to make new goals!
🖥️ Somewhere along the way I had become a designer
I no longer saw myself as retired. I had a design business. I designed doll clothes and sold the patterns.
After about 6 years on the doll clothes I wanted to branch out. I liked the idea of designing digital planners and journals.
I know a bit about desktop design and graphic design and art. However, I’m not an artist in the sense that an artist draws original images. I can draw original images but it’s hard, slow work that I’m not prepared to commit to on a long term basis. I want pretty planners now! So I create a planner and use art that I buy for commercial use along with some of my own art.
I Love Designing Doll Clothes
Where do I get my inspiration?
How did we ever survive without Pinterest!
I get a lot of my inspiration from human fashions on Pinterest. I really enjoy making a human design look great on the 18” doll. I also get ideas for outfits from the doll boards and the human boards on Pinterest.
My latest design is a copy of a dress I saw on a lady on the Brisbane train station while I was waiting to get the train back to Bundaberg. I would call it a boho style with 3 tiers to the skirt and panels in the bodice and a tie at the neck. Hers was made from 3 or 4 different blue and white patterns. I had to use what I had so I used 2 patterns in pink.
This month’s sewing pattern
This month I have been working on the Boho Dress for the 18” American Girl Doll. I like the little panelled top so look out for more designs with this bodice.
I made the 3 tiered skirt and the sleeves using existing patterns. The bodice is more of a mish mash of several designs, making the dress original enough to go in my Etsy shop too for $9 Australian.
Tip for reducing bulk
I while back I decided that pinking the seams and seam allowances is the best way to reduce bulk and save on thread and it is a perfectly safe finish for doll clothes. Sometimes I forget and just use the overlocker (serger) that is next to my sewing machine but another good reason for pinking the seams is that it is easy to unpick mistakes. The overlocker is very unforgiving.
Same tip but it saves problems when you make a mistake
I made a mistake with the second sleeve because the bodice looks similar inside and out except for the seam of the first sleeve. Luckily I wasn’t planning to overlock this second sleeve seam!
A bias neck band is a good finish for lots of designs
I made the neckline with a bias band so I could slip the ribbon ties into the band as I folded it over to stitch down. If you are looking for different ways to finish the necklines of dresses and tops I have a set of simple designs that I made up especially for practicing different ways to finish necklines. Some of my oldest customers will already have this. It’s not something I will be adding to the shop anytime soon but it will go in the paid subscription later this year.
What are my plans for the future?
I can see that the demand for doll clothes patterns is not diminishing so I want to keep adding to my pattern shop. Since I will be adding all new sewing patterns and some old ones to the paid subscription (just like a pattern club) I will be adding all new patterns to Etsy at $15 AUD.
Now that I have the Substack platform to send out my newsletters I can have a special paid subscription where I will be adding a link for downloading my new patterns each month. I also like to make accessories like bags and underwear so they will go in the paid newsletter too. Some months I will do patchwork or appliqué patterns instead of doll clothes. But I will be looking for ways to relate them to the 18” dolls.
I have a good collection of free designs that anyone can access with the dropbox link if you want to check out my style.
Drop box Doll Dressmaking Tutorials folder
Along with the sewing newsletter each month I will be doing weekly newsletters about my life journey.
If you are only interested in the Doll Clothes Pattern Club you can select just that section of my newsletter when you go to the subscription page.
Happy Sewing,
Val
