Inspiration from Simplicity 8281 Doll Shirt Pattern @ ChellyWood.com #Inspired #DollClothesPatterns

A quilted purple and turquoise blue frame surrounds an image of a red headed Breyer Rider doll (veterinarian Laura) standing beside the Barbie doll clothes patterns for Simplicity 8281. The shirt the Breyer Rider doll wears is very similar to a red and white striped shirt in the Simplicity doll clothes pattern set. — Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable sewing patterns for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

About a month ago, I wrote a blog post with the title, “How do you stop obsessively thinking about your sewing projects?” In this post, I explained that I kept dreaming of red and white striped fabric, and I kept obsessing about sewing the little shirt from View 6 of my Simplicity 8281 Barbie doll clothes pattern.

But it’s never enough to just make an ordinary store-bought pattern for me. I’ve got to challenge myself! So I re-designed my western shirt for Breyer Rider 8 inch dolls, so that it could be a long-sleeved jersey-style tee shirt with stripes.

And Voilà! We have a new shirt with a brand new style for my little 8 inch Breyer Rider doll! Watch for these patterns and tutorials in the coming weeks!

Here we see a front view of an 8 inch Breyer Rider doll (red-headed veterinarian Laura) modeling handmade doll clothes which were designed by Chelly Wood. The doll's long-sleeved shirt has a rounded hemline, a slight scoop neck, slightly puffy sleeves, and the sleeves are attached at the shoulder, rather than having a raglan style sleeve attachment. The shirt is made of red and white cotton jersey blended with spandex, and having very tiny horizontal stripes. The sleeves are long enough to reach to the doll's wrist. She also wears a pair of wide-legged navy blue pants or jeans. The doll faces forward with her hands at her sides. — Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable sewing patterns for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

You might think, “Why didn’t Chelly just re-size the Barbie pattern to fit a Breyer doll?”

Yes, that would have been a fun challenge too. I did think about that. After all, I have a formula for re-sizing patterns, which I share with my students in my “How to Alter Doll Clothes Patterns” course on the Creative Spark Online Learning website.

But sometimes I like to test my own patterns, just to make sure I’ve created PDFs that print correctly. And actually, I did discover that at least one of my Breyer doll clothes patterns was printing just a wee bit too large. I’m not sure why that is, and I’m still investigating that conundrum.

But yes, as you’ve probably hypothesized, I was definitely inspired by View 6 in the Simplicity 8281 doll clothes pattern.

In this close-up image of Simplicity Barbie doll clothes pattern number 8281, we see a Barbie with a Farrah Fawcett hair style modeling a red and white striped long-sleeve shirt under a light blue denim vest with red trim and matching light blue culottes (AKA gouchos). This is shown on the pattern as "view 6" and is surrounded by a number of other doll clothes like a green sweats suit with jacket, a yellow sun dress, and a bridal gown with veil. — Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable sewing patterns for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

I thought about designing a vest and culottes for my Breyer Rider. (That’s what we used to call them — these days I sometimes hear them called gauchos, but I think they’re pretty much the same thing.)

But instead, I created a new pants pattern that’s quite a bit wider at the bottom, than what has been in fashion recently.

In this image, the Breyer Rider (veterinarian Laura) doll faces away from the camera. She wears a red and white long sleeved shirt with navy blue pants or jeans that have wide legs like the 1970's style of pants. We can see that the back closure of her shirt uses snaps. She stands on a white floor with a turquoise blue mottled backdrop in front of her. She wears her ginger hair in a single pony tail. — Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable sewing patterns for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

As many of you know, I’m a school librarian in my “day job,” and I’ve noticed more and more girls wearing what they call “wide-leg jeans” that are reminiscent of the pants/jeans we wore, when I was in junior high school. So I thought it might be fun to re-design my Breyer Rider boot cut jeans to have a more retro-style wide leg.

And on the whole, I’m pretty pleased with how this outfit turned out.

The original red and white striped shirt from the Simplicity 8281 Barbie doll clothes pattern actually used a raglan style of sleeve; whereas my own pattern uses a regular sleeve, which attaches at the already-sewn shoulder.

The instructions below show how you would typically attach a raglan-style sleeve:

Here we see a page from the Simplicity 8281 instruction booklet that shows how to attach raglan style sleeves to the raglan style bodice of the long sleeved shirt from View 6 in this pattern set. — Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable sewing patterns for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

And since I like my doll clothes to be super durable, I usually create a lining for my dolls’ shirts, which is what I did with my little red and white striped number, for my Breyer Rider doll, even though Simplicity 8281 does not suggest using a lining.

In this close-up image of the raglan sleeved long-sleeve shirt from Simplicity doll clothes pattern 8281, we can clearly see that this doll shirt uses only one layer of fabric, rather than using a lining. The shirt is shown inside out with the seams in progress, and we can clearly see how the collar has been clipped (as have other seams) to demonstrate that only one layer of shirt fabric is suggested. — Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable sewing patterns for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

So my own pattern was inspired by Simplicity 8281‘s view 6 shirt, but it was not a re-sized version of the same shirt. I try not to do that sort of “copycat” thing because it doesn’t seem ethical to me.

I’ve talked about the practice of copying patterns on this website before, and it’s a topic that comes into question from time to time in sewing and pattern design circles.

Now that I’ve created a wider leg for my boot cut pants or jeans pattern, I was able to easily put my Breyer Rider doll into a pair of big “rubber” boots that fit comfortably under her dark blue trousers.

In the picture below, she’s wearing a pair of rubber boots that were actually designed to fit Momoko dolls, which are much taller than Breyer Riders. But those red boots are so darned cute, I couldn’t help trying them on her!

Here we see a close-up image of an 8 inch Breyer Rider doll's jeans and red boots. The red boots are very detailed, having a cream-colored tread, red rubbery-looking exterior, a black seam where the rubber meets the tread, and even a tiny white stitching line that shows where the boot and tread are joined. These boots are worn by an 8 inch Breyer Rider doll as the model, but they were designed for Momoko dolls. — Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable sewing patterns for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

Don’t you just love the details on those boots? Momoko’s footwear is, by far, the most intricately made of all the dolls’ shoes/boots I own.

But I digress…. We’ll have to talk about Momoko’s adorable rubber boots another day. They are worthy of an entire blog post, all on their own…

Most of the commercial patterns I display and talk about here on ChellyWood.com are also available for sale on eBay. However, if you’ve never purchased a pattern on eBay before, it’s a good idea to read the article I wrote called, “Tips for Buying Used Doll Clothes Patterns on eBay.” It will save you time, money, and will likely prevent buyer’s remorse.

And by the way, if you use the links I’ve provided to make your eBay purchase, this website will receive a small commission, which helps fund the ChellyWood.com website, so I can continue to provide you with all the free patterns and tutorial videos offered here.

To read more about my free sewing patterns and tutorials, please visit the “Helpful Tips” page.

For my free doll clothes sewing tutorial videos, be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel, ChellyWood1.

Maybe you already own some great commercial patterns, but you really wish you could alter them to look just a little different. If so, my Creative Spark class, “How to Alter Doll Clothes Patterns” may be just what you need to make your commercially designed patterns into the pattern you see in your imagination.

Are you worried that you won’t have time to take a course in doll clothes pattern alteration? You’ll be happy to learn that, for any class on Creative Spark, you don’t have to follow a schedule. Just sign up when you’re ready.

It’s a one-time fee for the course, and there’s no specific time limit to finish your course. You can just take your time and learn at the pace that suits you. So please go have a look at my paid courses on Creative Spark, using this link.

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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, Vogue, 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.