Here’s a preview of the outfit I’m posting free patterns for this week. At the turn of the new year, I asked for some feedback from my followers. Many of you wanted me to design doll clothes for 13-inch through 18-inch dolls, including AG dolls, Wellie Wishers, Hearts 4 Hearts, and even baby dolls.

Here’s the first of my creations in response to that survey. Incidentally, this pattern will also fit my vintage  Velvet doll, which is in the Crissy doll family (made by Ideal in the 1970’s), and she stands 16 inches tall (approx. 40.5 cm). Here’s a picture of Velvet in the same halter-style summer outfit that my baby doll is wearing above:

It looks super cute on Velvet, don’t you think? I love it!

This week I’m going to post patterns and tutorials for making the bodice/dress/halter top. Next week I’ll post patterns and tutorials for making the bloomers/shorts.

I mentioned that this is a halter-style dress or halter top. Here’s how it looks in back:

You can see it ties at the neck with a cute little ribbon. I used snaps to close the halter back, but you could use Velcro as well. In fact, I’ve given this outfit to my two-year-old niece, and my sister requested that we use Velcro for her next doll clothes outfit because snaps are too tricky for most two-year-olds.

Please visit ChellyWood.com again, later this week, to download and print the free patterns for this outfit!

 

Additional Information:

__________________

Some of my followers have wondered what motivates me to give my patterns away for free.

First of all, I’m a librarian by trade. Librarians love free stuff! We believe that the more a person knows, the more enriched their life will be. So it may sound kind of crazy, but I want ChellyWood.com to become a sort of library of free patterns that help people learn to sew doll clothes.

If you’d like to learn more about my motives, feel free to visit my Chelly’s Books page.

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).

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.

Here are some helpful ways to tell the world about my patterns:

• You can pin them on Pinterest.
• You can like them on Facebook.
• You can tweet about them.
• Use any other form of social media that appeals to you!

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.