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Continuing with the row house doll carrier started here.

Once the walls were all connected, I sewed the “floor” on, so now the shape was like a bucket.  Here’s a picture of the whole thing inside-out and upside-down (which is pretty much how you sew it).

Even though I started out with the felt matching the calico exactly, width and length, I eventually cut a little over a 1/4 (quarter) inch of the felt away from the calico so that the top hem wasn’t too bulky.  If I had to fold the felt as well as the calico at the top hem, it would have been too thick and would have looked weird

Then it was time to start working on the lining of each house.  Each liner started as a little bag-shape with the same dimensions of its outer shell.  I made them different colors just because.

The adjoining top hems were sewn together at the top of each lining, so they all became connected and the raw edges at the top started to fold down naturally.

At this point, the liners could go in the outer shell (the row houses).  I also added thick cardboard, actually the back of a writing tablet that had been used up, at the bottom of the house, under the liners.  I also added cardboard cut from a cereal box in the space between the liners and between the walls and the liners on the left and right, for a total of 4 cardboard inserts.

I probably should have done this before I even started sewing the liners into box/bag shapes, but at this point, I cut the door ways to match the doors cut through the felt and calico.

To finish the doorway, I hand-sewed double fold bias tape.  I used the package kind from Wrights, although it’s easy to make your own.  I just had some on hand in colors that I liked.

These doors are not finished yet.  Eventually, I will put doors with velcro closures on them.  But for now, they just hang out like this.

Now, around the top of the row house structures I had finished at this point, I need to put in the lower half of a zipper as well as a “hinge” along the back to keep the roof attached.  This is how I folded ribbon so that there were no raw edges at the ends of the hinge.

I sewed the hinge in between the lining and the outer shell with a topstitch.  Again, it was a good thing that I cut away that 1/4 inch or so of felt away from behind the calico, because the bulk was adding up quickly to this top hem.

Here are two shots of how the ends of the zipper meet the ends of the ribbon hinge

Here is the whole thing pinned and waiting for sewing…click for a larger image:

And here is a detail of the finished stitching…again, click to zoom in:

Hopefully by tomorrow I’ll be able to tell you about the roofs!

Tags: dolls, Fabric, Sewing, three dimensional sewing, toys, Tutorial, Unique, Washington DC, WIP . This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010 at 11:03 pm and is filed under Fabric Crafts, Tutorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.