Here we have another lovely preview. (It’s so fun to pose and take photos of Mattel’s Made to Move Barbie® dolls!) This dress, like the wedding gown I posted a few weeks ago, offers a one-shoulder look. But this time, the one-shoulder portion of the bodice is made of lace, overlaid across a felt bodice beneath.
This week, as my regular followers would predict, I’m offering the FREE printable sewing patterns for making this fashion dolls’ quinceañera dress. (It also works as a wedding gown or prom dress.)
On my difficulty scale, I’m going to give this sewing project 3.5 flowers. That’s because creating the pattern for it was a little challenging, even for me.
At first I had thought about creating a scalloped edge to the top of the bodice, as you can see in the photo below:
But that scalloped edge got wadded up under Barbie’s arm, so I had to scrap that original idea.
Unfortunately, this week’s tutorial will show a couple photos with that swatch of lace across the top like that. Try to ignore those pictures. Hopefully it won’t confuse anybody.
The other glitch I ran across when designing this pattern was the sheer size of the felt bodice when compared with the lace one. I actually had to adapt the pattern to allow for a bit of a dip in the felt bodice. In the photo below, you can see where I had to trim away a bit of felt to make the lace bodice look nice over the top of it:
Without trimming that off, the felt stuck out over the top of the lace bodice, but don’t worry! I’ve adapted the pattern to account for this change.
There was still one more adaptation that needed made with regards to this dress though: the armhole. It needed to be a lot deeper than the original pattern had offered. So here’s a photo of how I had to trim away some of the felt from the armhole before the dress formed an acceptable design:
So this week, I’ll re-post my bodice pattern with these new adaptations to it, along with the FREE printable sewing pattern for the skirt, which hasn’t changed much at all. Then later in the week, I’ll post my tutorial video, showing you how to make this lovely one-shoulder lace-and-felt bodice as part of a wedding gown or quinceañera / prom dress shown at the top of this post.
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Additional Information:
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My Gallery Page is the easiest way to search through all of my patterns to find what you want. Each image on the Gallery Page takes you to links for patterns and tutorials.
Need help printing my patterns? This link offers a tutorial showing you how to download and print my FREE patterns using Google Docs. (For the older print-a-pattern tutorial, which uses Microsoft Word, click here.) To review my difficulty scale (demonstrating how hard or easy a pattern is by the number of flowers displayed), take a look back at this blog post.
Please note: you must enlarge my patterns to fit a full-sized piece of American computer paper (8.5 x 11 inches or 216 x 279 mm) without margins, before printing. These designs use a scant 1/4 inch seam (4 mm to be exact).
If you’re wondering why I make patterns and videos without charging a fee, please visit the “Chelly’s Books” page, and that should explain my general motivations. My patterns are now available through “Creative Commons Attribution.” This means that I created my patterns (and therefore I own rights to them), but I’m willing to share them with everyone who will tell people about my website.
Are you new to sewing? I’ve 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.
In case you haven’t heard, I have actually designed some commercial patterns for Lammily LLC. You might want to visit the Lammily website to see what they’ve got going on.
If your question wasn’t answered here, feel free to submit a question. I’m always happy to help my followers find what they need, so they, too, can make amazing doll clothes and crafts!