If you ask me which doll was my all-time favorite as a child, it was my cousin’s Soul doll, from the Hasbro World of Love collection. Whenever my cousin Virginia and I got together, I would beg her to let me play with Soul. Why? That doll was just plain gorgeous! Her long eyelashes framed big eyes. Her chocolate skin was so unique among Barbie-like dolls of the 1970’s, and her hair was super-curly, like real African American hair. Man, that was a cool doll!

When I started collecting dolls as an adult, Soul was the first one I bought on eBay (in a collection with the other World of Love dolls). I remember the nostalgia of unboxing her. I just stared at Soul in awe, because this doll was even more beautiful than I had remembered.

So when I decided to film Romeo and Juliet with dolls, my first thought was to have Soul play Juliet, juxtaposed to an Anglo Romeo. But my daughters — often the voices of reason in my life — said, “Mom. That whole race thing has already been done with Romeo and Juliet.” They were referring to West Side Story, of course. The Romeo and Juliet project has been a joint adventure between myself and my daughters from the start, so I compromised and cast Soul as Benvolio.

As I’ve said in previous posts, the patterns that I’ve created to fit Soul also fit Breyer dolls, so for our Breyer Horse followers, you can make a costume like the one shown above by downloading the following patterns:

For Benvolio’s cap, use this pattern and follow this video tutorial.

Here’s the pattern plus tutorial for making Benvolio’s boots. (They’re together on one page.)

This is the printable pattern for Benvolio’s pants and shirt. Here’s the pattern for Benvolio’s vest. Each of these has a separate tutorial. Here’s the tutorial for making the bicolored pants. Here’s the tutorial for making the shirt. And here’s the tutorial for  making the little vest.

Benvolio also wields a sword in some sections of Romeo and Juliet.  In case you missed it in my earlier postings, here’s a tutorial showing you how to make a tiny sword for dolls.

You must enlarge my patterns to fit a full-sized piece of computer paper (8.5 x 11 inches or 216 x 279 mm) before printing. My designs use a 1/4 inch seam (standard for fashion doll sewing projects). If you have any questions about piecing this costume together, feel free to contact me, using my “Submit a Question” form. I’m always happy to help!

There’s no catch to these free patterns and tutorials. I just want people to know about my website; that’s all. So when you print my patterns, it’s always friendly and kind to like it on FB, tweet about it, and/or pin it to your Pinterest page. That way you’re helping to spread the word that these free, printable sewing patterns exist. Thanks! 😉