By carefully placing the gown pattern on the two-yard piece of fabric, 16 gowns can be cut from this length of fabric. Four of the gowns won't be on a fold, but a 1/4" seam can be sewn to compensate.

Click here for the doll gown pattern. Print the pattern at 100% (it's a pdf file) onto 8.5"x11" paper. Once the pattern is printed, compare the ruler in the printout to another ruler to make sure the pattern is the correct size.

After printing the pattern and confirming the correct size, you may find it helpful to trace the pattern onto heavy plastic. A plastic pattern makes quick work of marking the pattern onto the fabric with a permanent marker, like a Sharpie ultra fine point pen. Be sure to cut away all the permanent markings.

After washing the fabric in mild laundry soap (for babies) and drying it with a non-scented dryer sheet, iron the fabric. This makes for accurate cutting of the pattern pieces.

Once the fabric has been ironed, fold the fabric in half length-wise, right sides together. Then, fold the fabric in half width-wise. All four edges of the selvedge should be together and a fold on the opposite side.

With the selvedge edges at top, place the pattern on the fold opposite the selvedge edges. Trace around the plastic gown pattern onto the fabric with a permanent marker, like a Sharpie ultra fine point pen. There should be enough length of fabric to mark/cut four gown patterns along the fold.

Once the four gowns are marked/cut from the fold (4 gowns total), trim 1/4" away from the edge of the marked gowns to separate the length of marked fabric from the unmarked fabric.

Separate the two pieces of remaining unmarked fabric, but keep each piece folded in half length-wise (selvedges still together).

Now, fold the cut edge of the fabric up 5.5" (toward the selvedges). Four more gowns (8 gowns total) can be marked/cut from this length of fabric.

Again, trim 1/4" away from the edge of the gowns to separate the length of marked fabric from the unmarked fabric.

Do the same thing with the other piece of folded fabric, marking four more gowns (12 gowns total) and trimming 1/4" away from the edge of the marked gowns to separate the length of marked fabric from the unmarked fabric.

Fold each remaining piece of unmarked fabric in half length-wise, then in half length-wise again. All four selvedge edges should be together on each folded piece of unmarked fabric.

Mark two gowns along the straight of the grain on each of the two folded pieces of unmarked fabric (16 gowns total). Even though the edge of the pattern is not on a fold, this does not matter. Just sew a seam down the middle of one pair of pieces to compensate.

You should have 16 gowns cut from a two-yard piece of 44" fabric.

Hint: if you have a rotary cutter, it's an easy task to rotary-cut all straight edges of the gowns, leaving just the curved edges to cut with scissors.