Handmade Christmas: DIY Sleeping Bags for the Dollies

 

We are, apparently, an American Girl family.  All of the kiddos who are old enough have American Girl dolls.  While I was perusing the interwebs before Christmas, I saw a blog post by Kim Brancato where she showed how to make a dolly sleeping bag.  Since I had a lot of fleece scraps from the mermaid tails and the whale's tail, I thought it would be fun to make sleeping bags for each of the dollies.  

There are a number of patterns for dolly sleeping bags out there, but I liked this one especially because Kim used an elastic loop sewn into the bottom seam to roll up the bag.  Genius!  Some of my littles are not old enough yet to tie a bow - or even a knot, really - and the elastic loop allows them to roll up the bag all by themselves, and not have to continually pester a parent or older sibling.

 

Kim's measurement for the 18" American Girl doll sleeping bag was 23" x 27", and it was perfect.  But two of my littles have Wellie Wishers dollies, and I knew that size sleeping bag would be too big for these 14-1/2" dolls.  I cut these dolly sleeping bags 18" x 24" and they were perfect.

 

The only change I made from Kim's tutorial was to attach the pillow to the sleeping bag.  This way, the pillow won't get lost, and dolly can always find her pillow, leading to fewer meltdowns from dolly's human friends.  The pillow then rolls up inside the sleeping bag and the elastic goes around the whole thing, making a nice, tidy bundle.  You may want to cut your elastic just a tad longer to allow for the pillow if you use this method

I tried several methods to attach the pillow, but I found that the easiest way (after making 3, I finally figured it out!) was to cut it with a 1" seam allowance at the bottom.  Sew a seam at 1" with an opening for the stuffing.  Then sew it closed.  Then sew the pillow inside the top seam of the sleeping bag at 1/2". This way, the stuffing doesn't get in the way while you're trying to stitch the bag together.