Sewing A Themed Wardrobe: It's Showtime! Part Four

Hi Everyone! We're back with another interesting tutorial to round out the Showtime theme. In this installment, Shari will be demonstrating how to make a rolling garment rack for your dolls. This crafty tutorial doesn't require any sewing, but it is a great resource for storing all your beautifully crafted sewn garments!

A while back we made a storage tote with a PVC pipe garment rack insert for storing doll clothes. In this tutorial, we're going to take this same concept to make a rolling garment rack. It is super easy to make and a fun way to store doll garments that you want to have quick and easy access to. Since the rack isn't glued together, it can easily be disassembled for storage when it's not in use.

For this project you will need:

• One 10' length of 1/2” diameter PVC pipe
• Ten “T” joints
• Four 90 degree elbows
• Four small casters
• Four pipe adapters for the casters (measure the INSIDE diameter of the pipe to determine what size pipe adapter you will need) 

There are a variety of casters available, but the ones for this project should have a stem which can be either threaded or non-threaded. I am using casters with non-threaded stems in this demonstration.

As for tools, you will need:

• Ruler or Tape measure
• Pencil
• Hacksaw OR PVC pipe cutter (links to amazon)
• Hammer for tapping in the pipe adapters 

The were thing we are going to do is cut the pipe. It's really pretty easy to cut PVC pipe. All you need to do is measure the pipe length you want to cut, mark it with a
pencil, and cut. Cutting with a hacksaw is easy enough, but it will take a little time to cut all the lengths of pipe. To make quick clean work of cutting the pipe, I recommend using a PVC pipe cutting tool. We got one a while back when we were working on a plumbing project and it made cutting the pipe a snap – literally. All you do is line up the cutting blade with your mark on the pipe and start ratcheting until the pipe is cut. You get a nice clean edge in a fraction of the time with no mess!

The pipe lengths you will need are:

• Four 16” lengths of pipe
• Two 8” lengths of pipe (these can becut up to 18” if you'd like a wider rack)
• Twelve 2” lengths of pipe 

Once the pieces are cut, it is simply a matter of assembling he garment rack.

Start with the 16” lengths of pipe, these will be the upright supports. For each pipe, put a 90 degree elbow at the top. Then, attach a “T” to the bottom end of each pipe with the cross of the “T” attached to the pipe and the center of the “T” turned toward the center of the garment rack.

Find the 8” lengths of pipe. These will be the upper and lower horizontal supports. Attach the cross of a “T” to each end of these supports.

Use the 2” lengths of pipe to attach the upright and horizontal supports together.

Now, all you need to do is add the casters to make it a rolling garment rack.

My caster adapters are too small to fit the “T” fittings, so I will apply each adapter to a 2” length of pipe by gently tapping it in with a hammer. Once the adapters are set, I can simply attach them to the ends of the “T” pipe at the bottom of the rack.

For my non-threaded casters, I need to pull off the metal sleeves that came with them before I can attach them to the garment rack. Then, it is just a matter of popping them into the pipe adapters.

You could take the time to spray paint your pipes before assembling your rack if you would like to have a different color. I decided to keep mine white since that will wear better over time. The print on the pipe doesn't look very nice, but that is easily cleaned off with a bit of acetone or nail polish remover. 

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial! Next week we'll be back with a bonus installment for this topic. Cinnamon will wrap up the course with a look at all the piece together and share a few darling mix and match dress-up ideas from Donna Kinley!

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