If you stumbled at this website, hoping to find some easy-to-sew patterns and tutorials for fashion doll clothes, let me say that you’ve come to the right place!
I actually designed this halter-style dress for my cousin’s little girl to sew. She was only 11 years old at the time, and she was pretty new to sewing. So I designed this pattern to be as simple as can be, so anyone could easily follow the directions in the tutorial to make their fashion dolls dresses just like this one. Here are the pattern and tutorial for this lovely ball gown:
Should you decide this halter dress is still too difficult for your basic sewing level, please consider following ChellyWood.com, as I hope to post a whole series on how to sew the very simplest doll clothes patterns ever. These patterns and tutorials will be created with young children in mind, so even very small kids can easily learn how to sew for their dolls.
In fact, for those of you who regularly follow my blog, you may be wondering why I’m re-posting old news. I’m currently working on those easy-peasy sewing tutorials over the summer months while I’m on vacation. I’ll return to posting new material when the summer comes to a close.
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Remember that you need to enlarge my patterns to fit an American-sized sheet of printer paper (8.5 x 11 inches or 216 x 279 mm), without margins, before printing. Feel free to pin, like, or tweet about my free patterns and tutorials. If you can’t find a specific pattern, just submit a question to me directly.
Need help printing my patterns? This link will take you to a tutorial showing you how to download my free, printable patterns.
I’ve also got a playlist of tutorials for the beginning sewists on my YouTube channel. It includes video tutorials showing you how to do a basic straight stitch when sewing by hand, how to use the whipstitch to hem a garment, how to sew on snaps, and even how to design your own doll clothes patterns, for those who are new to design and alterations.
If you’re wondering why I make patterns and tutorials without charging a fee, please visit the “Chelly’s Books” page, and that should explain my general motivations. Overall, I love to sew, design doll clothes, and embroider, and I think it’s important to share my talents with the world, so others can learn to do what I do.
beautiful.
No matter what program I use to view the pattern, the sizing is incorrect. I don’t use a printer for most online patterns, I trace directly from laptop screen. Usually patterns will have a 1 inch measuring scale to assure correct sizing. Without this, there is no true way to know of proper scale. Even clicking on “View actual size” is not in proportion.
Hi Lynn, and thanks for your comment. I’ve never heard of people tracing patterns from a screen, but it certainly is a creative way to go about it! I looked into this problem, and if you’re using Google Chrome as your web browser, you can get an extension called “Custom Zoom,” which customizes the size of your zoom to whatever percent you need. Here’s a link: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/custom-zoom/flacjbeghjebdkbgdlncibepomldoebh
I hope this helps. It would be really nice if you could use my patterns! Another thing you might try is this: after tracing, find a photocopy machine and fiddle with their enlarge/reduce function until you get the size you want. But it would probably be easier to just go to a public library and print from their computers if you don’t have a printer of your own.
I have a printer, but I find that by tracing & using parchment paper and the ability to custom zoom is a lot easier and cheaper than printing out…that way I can resize for dolls with slight variations. Being able to change the % isn’t the problem, especially when I have an accurate measurement to begin with or a pattern is posted online in correct “actual size”..but on yours, there is nothing to go by & when I click on “actual size”, it definitely isn’t correct for any of the various Barbie size dolls.
If it helps at all, I draw my patterns by hand, scan them, then digitize them using Microsoft Paint. Perhaps you can use Microsoft Paint to find their “actual size.”
Thank you for providing these great patterns! I used to sew clothes for my Barbie’s with my Grandmother, she never used a pattern as she was a professional tailor. She’s not around to help me sew for my daughter. This is almost like having her there though. Thank you!!!
Awww… Cristi, thank you for sayng so. My grandmother inspired my passion for sewing too. This is one of the kindest things anyone has ever said in the comments! So nice of you!