matching girls dress and american girl dolls dress

My kids got invited to a birthday party for a little friend from church. I love when I get to create little gifts for their friends! It's always fun to sew for my kids but I love when I get to share my limited sewing skills with others as well. So I decided to make a pillowcase dress with a small dress to match for her American Girl doll as well. Pillowcase dresses are pretty easy to make...and there are a ton of tutorials out there so I'm not going to post a full tutorial just some of the things I do to make it easier on myself!

I always fold the fabric in half and cut BOTH the front and the back at the same time. Saves me some measuring and cutting and then I'm sure my pieces match (maybe everyone does that, I don't know)

This was a size 8 dress and I measure the top part to be 8 inches (folded) the length was about 27 inches and the bottom of the arm cutout was at 23 inches.

Then I sew wrong sides together (right sides out) and then the top layer of fabric close to the stitch line.

Iron the longer piece just to the stitch marks

Then fold over again and sew (does that make sense?). This is so that you don't have any unfinished raw edges!!

And I just wanted to show you that you CAN make a pillowcase dress without using bias tape! I just folded the edge under twice and sewed it down!

I made a little hair clip for the birthday girl (Naomi was nice enough to model it for me)...and I decided to try something new and added this ribbon behind the "flower"

Here's the finished dresses!

Dresses for a little girl and her doll, and matching hair accessories too!

I got the doll dress pattern from Skip to My Lou!

Here's the birthday girl and her doll Kit!! So cute!

She really seemed to like the dress and is excited to match her doll!!

I haven't listed these in my etsy store yet but I will be. If you're interested in buying a set for your daughter or a loved one they are $30 per set (which includes 4 items). Email me to start the fabric conversation (I don't have anymore of this fabric and couldn't find it where I found it the first time)! purejoycreative at gmail dot com. Hope you had a great weekend!