If you live in the southern hemisphere then summer is approaching soon…
True, this past week I’ve posted the fall-themed “Sunflower Harvest” dress pattern for dolls, but I’m going to wrap up the week with a post for my faithful followers who live south of the equator, as they’re looking forward to the warmer weather of spring and summer. Yep! Today’s post is for all you South Americans, Australians, and southern Africans who love to sew for dolls!
What do you say to a summer shorts-and-top combo for the 18-inch / 46 cm Madame Alexander (or AG) dolls? How about sewing something summery for the new 28-inch / 71 cm Barbie Best Fashion Friend dolls?
Here are the patterns and tutorials you’ll need to sew the sleeveless felt shirts and easy-to-sew shorts shown in the image at the top of this post:
- Free printable sewing pattern for felt sleeveless shirt
- Easy-sew tutorial showing how to make the felt sleeveless shirt
- Free printable sewing pattern for the shorts
- Easy-sew tutorial showing how to make the shorts
Please don’t be confused by the fact that the 46 cm doll’s patterns and tutorials are the same ones as the 71 cm doll’s patterns and tutorials.
To my surprise, as I went about designing these easy-to-sew patterns, I discovered that the two dolls can swap clothes… What’s that you say? You don’t believe me? I could hardly believe it myself! But if you look back at this post, you can see my Kaya doll (the 46 cm doll) wearing the same blue shorts and white top being modeled by my 28-inch / 71 cm Barbie Best Fashion Friend doll. Yes, those are the exact same clothes.
In fact, the 71 cm Barbie Best Fashion Friend can also wear the pink top and floral shorts that you see Kaya wearing in the photo above. Amazing, right?
My Kaya doll is also modeling the easy DIY sandals project that I posted back in August. Unfortunately, my 71 cm /28 inch Barbie Best Fashion Friend doll comes with painted-on shoes, so she doesn’t have an equivalent sandal pattern. But just in case you’re wanting the sandal pattern for your 46 cm dolls, here are those patterns and tutorials too:
- 18 inch (46 cm) doll sandal pattern (FREE)
- tutorial video for 46 cm doll sandals (also free)
Well, my southern friends and followers, I do hope you have a lovely summer! With all these free doll clothes patterns and tutorials to work with, you should at least stay busy, right? 😉
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.
Please be advised: when I get some time off from my job as a school librarian, I’m planning to develop a new layout for ChellyWood.com, and whenever you redesign something, it’s possible for stuff to get lost! So if there’s a specific pattern you’ve bookmarked because you want to make that outfit, I advise printing the pattern soon. Links may not work quite as well after I redesign my website.
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. You can also write to Chelly Wood at this address. I’m always happy to help my followers find what they need, so they, too, can make amazing doll clothes and crafts.