I’m under the impression that until now, there haven’t been very many patterns available for the 28-inch “Just Play” Best Fashion Friend Barbie and other my-size dolls in this extra-tall height category because I’ve received a lot of email requests for patterns to fit these (and similar) life-sized dolls.
I waited for this beautiful 28-inch Mattel Barbie doll to be available on sale, and once I bought her, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that she can swap clothes with my 18-inch dolls to some extent. These shorts, which I’ll be posting the free pattern for this week, are actually identical to the shorts I made for my AG doll, Kaya, and they also fit my Crissy doll and my Madame Alexander 46 cm doll.
The only difference is in the waist. Each doll has a slightly different waist circumference, so you’ll want to make sure you measure your doll’s waist for elastic when you’re making the shorts. Of course, it does offer those same instructions in my doll shorts sewing tutorial video, which I’ll be posting later this week.
That does it for this week’s preview. Please come back to download the free printable sewing pattern for these shorts tomorrow, and I also plan to post my tutorial video the following day.
Then next week, I’ll post patterns for making the easy-to-sew felt shirt that my super-sized Barbie doll is modeling. And this may surprise you–as it did me–but that felt top also fits my 18-inch Madame Alexander and American Girl dolls! I just love it when dolls can swap clothes!
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 post or 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.