#Sew shorts for 18-inch dolls with ChellyWood.com’s free #sewing #patterns!

The image shows Kaya, the American Girl 18-inch doll, standing on a beach with an 18 inch Madame Alexander doll. They wear summer clothes that are hand-made, include shorts, a sleeveless summer top, and a bikini. Each doll also sports a pair of hand-made slip-on sandals. There's a watermark in the corner of the photo which says "ChellyWood.com: free doll clothes patterns and tutorials." — Please visit ChellyWood.com for FREE printable sewing patterns to fit dolls of many shapes and sizes.

Last week and the week before, we learned to make the swimsuit that my 18-inch Madame Alexander doll is wearing in the photo above. This week we’re going to make the nautical-style shorts that my Kaya doll (from American Girl) is modeling for us in these photos.

This image shows a Kaya doll from American Girl doll company wearing handmade shorts and an easy-to-sew sleeveless shirt. She appears to be playing on a sandy beach, with splashing water around her feet. Her home-made flip-flops look like they're floating on the water. The watermark on this image says, "ChellyWood.com: free printable patterns and tutorials." — Please visit ChellyWood.com for FREE printable sewing patterns for dolls of many shapes and colors.

Of course, if the shorts fit AG dolls, they’ll probably fit my 18 inch Madame Alexander doll too, right? Have a look for yourself:

The image shows an 18-inch (46 cm) Madame Alexander doll wearing handmade shorts and a sleeveless summer shirt. She stands on a sandy strip of beach with water in the foreground. On either side of her are pretend palm trees made of faux fern plans extending from a paper-covered cardboard tube that seems to "grow" out of the strip of sandy beach. The little doll looks happy in the sunshine of her home-made beach scene. The watermark says, "ChellyWood.com: free patterns and tutorials." — Please visit ChellyWood.com for FREE printable sewing patterns for dolls of many shapes and sizes.

Isn’t this beach scene fun? Later this week, I’ll show you my tricks and tips for making the sandy island beach scene, including the “palm trees” and the glistening (imaginary) water.

But before I end today’s “preview” blog post, let me surprise you with one more doll who can fit into this week’s shorts project… Crissy dolls from the Ideal Toy Company:

The image shows a red-headed hair-growing "Crissy" doll from the 1970's, wearing hand-made shorts and an easy-to-sew handmade summer shirt. This doll stands on a concrete-style diorama ground with a cloud-dotted blue sky behind her. Crissy smiles at the camera, and her long red hair flows behind one shoulder. The overlaying watermark says, "ChellyWood.com: free printable sewing patterns for dolls of many shapes and sizes." The Crissy doll was made by the Ideal toy company, but her clothes were all handmade by Chelly Wood, whose website offers free patterns to fit Crissy dolls and many similar-sized 18-inch dolls along with dolls of other sizes and makes. — Please visit ChellyWood.com for FREE printable sewing patterns to fit dolls of many shapes and sizes.

Crissy is another 18-inch doll, and granted, the nautical summer shorts do fit her with a longer length and a bit more room, but hey, they do fit!

So this week I’ll give you the free patterns and tutorials for sewing these shorts, and later this month we’ll look at the shirt patterns as well.

If you came to ChellyWood.com because you were wondering about the Popsicle swimsuit pattern pictured in the very first photo on this page, I posted all the links you’ll need for that outfit in one of last week’s blog posts. Here’s a link to help you re-locate those free doll swimsuit patterns and tutorials.

Additional Information:

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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.

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.