Have you ever noticed that ChellyWood.com has a “Share Your Creations” page?
If you’re on a desktop or laptop computer, just go up to the website’s main menu (on a mobile device, look for the hamburger menu in the corner). Where it says “About the Designer,” there’s a drop-down menu. Click on that drop-down menu, and at the bottom of the list, it says, “Share Your Creations!” Click on that.
Early in this website’s history, I started receiving amazing photos of the doll clothes that were made by my fans and followers. I didn’t know what to do with these photos at first, so I would just do blog posts about them. But in 2019, I came up with the idea to make a hub for all the great photos of people’s creations that were made using my patterns and/or craft tutorials.
About a month ago, for example, Sadie D. sent me this photo of her Curvy Barbie:
She used her own creative genius to alter the patterns for my Curvy shirt and shorts (shown below), adding sleeves and a hood, and using two different colors of fabric to make the purple-on-top, white-on-the-bottom two-tone shirt her doll is wearing. Can you believe her creativity? Wow!
She added a hood with ears, as you’ll see in Sadie’s photo below:
I’m not 100% sure, but her hood and ears may have been inspired by (or even used the patterns from) my Skipper hoodie and cat-eared Halloween costumes, which are shown just below:
And here’s the cat-eared Halloween costume:
When I first received Sadie’s message that she’d like to share her creations with me, this is how she described her work:
“Hello! I have made an outfit for my Barbie doll based off of the outfit of the character Luz from a TV show titled ‘The Owl House’. I made a cat-ear hoodie using your shirt pattern, and the leggings and shorts using your pants and shorts patterns respectively. I would like to know if it could be featured on your ‘Share Your Creations’ page. Thank you! -Sadie D.”
How clever is this girl? She created her costume to match a character from The Owl House! Pretty impressive!
And you’ll notice she used my pants pattern to create the leggings. I think she probably means these pants:
But clearly Sadie made some alterations to those pants. For leggings, you would need to move the seam allowance in a bit, and she also appears to have made them shorter. Take another look, and you’ll see what I mean:
So how do people make complicated alterations like this? Most people practice learning how to do pattern alterations with a mentor.
If you don’t have a mentor though, I’d be happy to become your mentor… In fact, that’s exactly what I’m doing for all of the students enrolled in my “How to Alter Doll Clothes Patterns” course on the Creative Spark online learning platform.
Here’s what you can learn if you sign up for my “How to Alter Doll Clothes Patterns” class:
- How to re-size a garment from small-to-large (for example, make a Skipper hoodie fit Curvy Barbie)
- How to re-size a garment from large-to-small (for example, make an 18 inch American Girl doll dress fit a 15 inch Wellie Wisher doll)
- How to bring up a hem (like making the leggings shorter than the pants on Sadie’s doll)
- How to lengthen a pants or shorts pattern (like how Sadie was able to add cuffs to the shorts)
- How to adjust sleeve lengths (so turn a long-sleeved hoodie into a short-sleeved shirt, for example)
I also have a whole huge section of the class dedicated to altering dresses and skirts. In this section, we learn how to make a gusset to extend the bodice of a dress (like when you’ve finished sewing the dress and discover it’s not quite wide enough around the middle to fit your doll).
And then I teach you how to use a doll’s body measurements to shorten and/or lengthen dress hems, how to make a skirt or dress more full or less full, etc…
Here’s what people are saying about Creative Spark’s courses in general, which also applies to my “How to Alter Doll Clothes Patterns” class as well:
- You have access to all the videos for an unlimited time, so you can keep on viewing the tutorials over and over again
- It’s a one-time fee for the course, but you can pay in two installments (this is not a subscription where you keep on paying out the yin-yang forever)
- Because you have an unlimited amount of time to view the course, you can learn at your own pace
- You only need a few minutes each day (or even once a week for a few minutes at a time) to learn the skills in the course
Best of all, when you’re done taking “How to Alter Doll Clothes Patterns,” you can share your creations with my audience, through the “Share Your Creations!” page on this website. And I’ll even allow you to advertise your social media presence with your “Share Your Creations!” postings…
This will, of course, help you:
- Expand your online following
- Earn money on doll clothes you make and sell
- Become part of the online doll clothing community
- Make new friends who share your love of doll clothes sewing and design
So if you envy Sadie’s skills with doll clothes pattern alterations, I invite you to sign up for my “How to Alter Doll Clothes Patterns” course whenever you’re ready. There’s no rush. The class will be available for a long time to come.
For those of you who have encouraged me to make another class, I’ve been spending my summer building yet another Creative Spark course. This time I’ll be teaching you how to design your own doll pants patterns from scratch!
I’m having a blast coming up with lessons in how to make your own pants patterns, and just look at these cute little overalls I’ve designed for my Ginny doll while working on my next Creative Spark course:
If you’d like to hear about my next class when it becomes available, you can bookmark my instructor’s page on the Creative Spark website and revisit it from time to time, follow me on YouTube, sign up for my own website newsletter (look for the subscription button on this website), or sign up for the Creative Spark newsletter… whatever appeals to you.