I often get “fan mail” asking, “Will you please design more doll clothes for boy dolls?” and then the email mentions the type of doll they want “male doll clothes” for.

Chances are, I already have a pattern that will most likely work. That’s because boys’ clothes and girls’ clothes really aren’t that different, if you use your imagination.

Take the McCall’s Craft Pattern M6233 shown in today’s blog post, for example. At first glance, this looks like a series of patterns designed for girl baby dolls only. But take another look, and imagine these doll clothes in different types of fabrics…

Shirt patterns D and C are just long-sleeved and short-sleeved versions of raglan-sleeved T-shirts. Imagine them with grey jersey fabric for the torso and red sleeves, like you see on my Ken doll below:

Now take another look at the jumpsuit found in View A. What if you made this jumpsuit out of denim, eliminated the little bows, and created a blue-and-green striped T-shirt to go under it?

Or how about this: make the bodice of the jumpsuit out of pinstriped blue and white cotton fabric, and make the pants portion of the jumpsuit out of solid blue, so it looks like a pair of trousers with a vest over the top!

So keeping these ideas in mind, what else could you do with this set of patterns to make it more typical of baby boys’ clothes? Please leave comments with your ideas…

Something to keep in mind, though, is this: the stereotypes of pink ruffled dresses for girls and blue denims for boys are slipping out of favor with young people today. These stereotypes are actually a fairly recent development in Western culture.

According to Wikipedia, “From the mid-16th century until the late 19th or early 20th century, young boys in the Western world were unbreeched and wore gowns or dresses until an age that varied between two and eight.” The term “unbreeched” means they didn’t wear pants; they wore dresses.

And even today, the types of clothes that are used to dress a baby vary significantly from one world culture to the next. To learn more about the traditional clothes worn by children and babies from several countries, I recommend reading an article called, “20 Stunning Pics Of Traditional Mama And Baby Clothing From Around The Globe” published by moms.com.

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Chelly Wood and the ChellyWood.com website are not affiliated with the pattern company or companies mentioned in this blog post, but Chelly finds inspiration in the doll clothes designed by these pattern companies. To purchase patterns from Simplicity, McCall’s, Butterick, or other pattern companies shown and discussed in this blog post, please click on the links provided here. These links below the “Disclaimer” section do not help raise money for this free pattern website; they are only offered to give credit to the company that made these patterns.