How to Make Fairy Wings for your Doll

Share with your friends?

I have two girls, so we have a rather large collection of American Girl dolls, Waldorf dolls, and lots of other dolls. Buying clothing and accessories for them can get rather expensive, so I prefer to make a lot of it. Making clothes for doll is so much fun! You can let your imagination go wild and make almost anything. I love to make fantasy play wear for my girls’ dolls like mermaid tails, fairy dress, tutus, and fairy wings.

It really is very easy to do without a pattern and lets your creative juices flow. Plus, it’s a bit cheaper than going to the American Girl store.

This tutorial will show you an easy way to make fairy wings! These fit perfectly on an American Girl doll or other 18-inch dolls. They are also fit well on 15-20 inch sized Waldorf dolls as well. I recommend using cotton wovens for the easiest wings to make.

If you feel adventurous and aren’t a novice, go with something fun! Since it is important to go with natural fibers for Waldorf dolls, I love to use hemp silk or dupioni silk to make wings. They come out really lovely!

These instructions explain how to make custom fit wings by measuring and drawing your own wings. This way you can make wings for any size doll.  You can skip step 1 if you are simply using the pattern.

Fairy Wings for Dolls Tutorial

Supplies

• Doll Fairy Wings Sewing Pattern
• 2 fat quarters of same fabric
• 1 15 x 21 size Heat n Bond lite
• 1 15 x 21 size of Peltex or Timtex
• 1/8 inch ribbon or 1/4 inch elastic for attachment to doll
• Ribbons/flowers, etc. for decorating
• Thread that closely matches the 2 fat quarters
• Glue gun

Directions

1. If you are making these wings for any other size doll than an American Girl, you will need to measure your doll for the wings and resize them.  

This is how I measure for other size dolls:  Measure your doll – first the width and second, the length by measuring diagonal to how far out you want the wings to be. 

2. Take the 2 fat quarters and open them up flat with wrong side up.  Take the fusible webbing (Heat n Bond Lite) and iron it to one of the fabrics.  Then take the Peltex/Timtex and iron it to the other fabric piece.  Remove the backing for the fusible webbing and put the Heat n Bond to the Peltex and iron them together. 

**If you’re brave, you can skip the fusible webbing and just iron both fabrics the Peltex, but I find it fuses much better with the addition of fusible webbing. 

3. Now print out the doll fairy wing sewing pattern and cut it out.  Now take the paper backing you just removed from the fusible webbing, fold it in half, and then, trace and cut out your full set of wings.

4.  Take your new full set of wings and lightly trace it with a pencil or tailor’s chalk, or invisible marker on one side of the fabric.  

If you feel lucky, you can attempt to cut it out using a small rotary cutter without tracing.  I find this to be hard because of the tight curves.

5.  Cut the wings out, leaving about a 1/4 inch sewing allowance on the edge.  We will cut this off later.

6.  Match your thread to as close to the color of the wings as you can.  The closer the same color it is, the more professional it will look.  

Then, using a zigzag stitch, sew a satin stitch around the entire wings, just inside your tracing.  My sewing machine is a Bernina, and I put my stitch width on 0.5 and stitch length on 2 for a satin stitch.  This is a fairly small stitch.  You do not want a wide zigzag stitch, it will show flaws.

This is the finished look of the satin stitch:

7. Slowly cut around the entire wings to just at the zigzag. Be very careful not to cut the threads. If you have applique scissors, they make it easy to get very close.

8. You can choose to add ribbon ties or elastic loops for attaching your wings to your doll.  I have found through making a lot of these, I prefer the elastic because it requires no ties.  

A. RIBBONS: On the front side (the side against the doll’s back that is NOT pictured) attach 1/8 inch ribbons vertically. Measure out approximately 1.5 inches on either side from the middle of the wings.  This will make the ribbons 3 inches apart total.  Make sure your wings are laying vertically up and down, then lay each one out vertically on the wings, too.  Then, attach each one with a small tack stitch, about 1/4 inch long.

B. ELASTIC:  Cut two pieces of 1/8 inch approximately 4.5 inches in length.  Measure out approximately 1.5 inches on either side from the middle of the wings.  This will make the elastics 3 inches apart total.  Cross over the raw ends (leave a little extra you can snip off and tack them down with a zigzag stitch about 1/4 inch as shown in the picture.  Then, cut off  excess elastic edges.

9.  Now it’s time to decorate! You can go wild with this and add all kinds of pretty things with a glue gun from buttons to flowers and ribbons and more.    

And you’re done!!

Share with your friends?