When you’re doing dollhouse upholstery you should try to use a small-scale fabric that’s close to the actual scale of the dollhouse. Since 1:12 is a common dollhouse size, 1:12 scale fabric is the best thing to use for upholstery and fabric accessories in your doll’s house for DIY miniature projects. True 1:12 scale fabric is hard to find, though, because a lot of the fabrics that people use for dollhouses are just regular small prints that aren’t scaled down from larger patterns.
I was looking for some 1:12 scale dollhouse fabric and couldn’t find many that weren’t basic stripes or damask, which wasn’t what I was really looking for. The miniature small-scale fabrics that I did find weren’t really 1:12 scale, either, they were just little patterns that were more likely used for quilting. I’m also a quilter, so that’s fine, but I decided to design some fabrics for myself to use on dollhouse furniture and mini accessories.
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What makes dollhouse fabric a real 1:12 scale?
The good thing about dollhouse fabric is that it doesn’t HAVE to be an exact 1:12 or 1:6 or 1:24 scale. That exactness is more important for furniture, since it needs to fit into the dollhouse visually the right way. Since fabric prints come in all sizes, it’s entirely possible to just use a small fabric print and have it look fine in your doll’s house. And using solid colors always works, too.
If you take a pattern that’s 12″x12″ then shrink it to 1″x1″, that’s a true 1:12 scale design. The problem with that is that some smaller patterns are so teeny tiny when you shrink them down, you can barely see the details of the design. Plus, when you’re printing things on fabric instead of paper it looks different too, and you can lose the details.
Using small-scale patterns that aren’t designed to be 1:12 scale will usually work out okay, but unless you shrink them down from 12″ square, it’s not guaranteed that they’ll be the right scale. You can see some small-scale fabric in this article about dollhouse chair to see what the correct scale looks like: Dollhouse chair seats makeover.
Having said that, sometimes you’ll need to scale them a little larger to make them look right, too. If the original design is too busy the smallest version can look muddy. It takes a little trial and error sometimes.
And if the original pattern was made to be a different size and not 12″ square, the pattern might not be a 1″ square repeat. I designed some patterns that filled up a fat quarter of fabric, so shrinking it down to 1/12 scale didn’t make it a 1″ square repeat. It’s a rectangular repeat, but it can still be 1/12 scale.
So it’s a little complicated, but it you find a small-scale pattern that works for what you need, that’s all that you should really worry about.
Where to get custom fabric for dollhouses.
I looked around for some fabric printing services that would give me a good result, and I decided to use Spoonflower because it’s an established brand with a good reputation.
Another thing that I like about it, even though it makes it more expensive for me, is that you can order a test swatch of the design printed on fabric before you can sell it. That’s important because it forces you to quality-check the different patterns before you decide that they’ll work for your projects.
The most economical way to get samples of a bunch of patterns would be to order a fill-a-yard sampler. That fills a yard of fabric with multiple patterns so that you can check to see if you like the way that they look in real life.
I ordered a few basic designs to see what they looked like, and the print quality was good, but the scale was a little too large.
And sometimes the 1″ scale was still be too big if the individual design was really big to begin with, so it needed to be smaller.
This one with repeating peonies was pretty good, and each flower was about 1/2″ across. If I made it larger the flowers would be REALLY big, but at 1/2″ they looked fine. So this one is technically 1:24 scale, but it looks right for a 1:12 dollhouse scale.
I changed these other patterns to the same scale, since the flowers were a little too big in my opinion:
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After adjusting these, the flowers are 1/2″ across each, so the fabric looks better on smaller-scale projects.
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What to use the miniature dollhouse fabric for.
I used this fabric to cover a little bench, and the matching wallpaper on a wall in the same room.
I thought that the pattern was a little too big on the bench, so I also shrunk that down a little so that it was a true 1″ to 12″ scale.
The good thing about Spoonflower is that you can choose the scale for each project, so if something is too big or small, you can adjust it.
I also set the scale of wallpaper a little larger than the fabrics that match them, because wallpaper patterns are usually bigger.
I would also use these for curtains, pillows, bedding, a mini quilt, or anything else that would be a fabric-covered item in a dollhouse.
You can also use fabric for wallpaper, so if you don’t want to use real wallpaper you can use any cloth that you have.
Quilting fabric Vs. Small-Scale fabrics.
I mentioned that a lot of fabrics that are used for quilting can be used for dollhouse projects as long as the design is little enough. If you’re looking for dollhouse fabric, you can check to see if there are small-scale patterns in quilting fabrics that would work.
Small-scale quilting fabrics aren’t always going to be a real 1:12 scale, though. They might work just fine for small projects, but the scale might not be exact.
The truth is that it doesn’t really matter as long as you like the way that the project turns out.
I decided to divide my Spoonflower shop up into multiple sections, with all the dollhouse scale stuff in one section and the larger quilting fabrics in others in order to keep it separate.
True 1:12 patterns can be really small!
A real 1:12 pattern can end up looking really small, but that’s the way that they should be!
This little pattern of daisies is so small I debated whether to even list it at that size, or whether to make it bigger. I decided to leave it the way that it is, but not to make it any smaller.
The thing about this pattern is that it’s technically a 1:6 scale, but the size of the flowers in the original pattern is so small it wouldn’t be good to shrink it any more.
These solid patterns with white flowers worked fine at a 1:12 scale because I made them pretty large to begin with. Shrinking them down didn’t make them hard to see, and they still printed clearly.
All of these designs would work well for 1:12 scale dollhouse projects, and I’m adding to my Spoonflower collections bit by bit as I have time. You can see all of them here: Decorate Small on Spoonflower
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