The Best Mix and Match Doll Clothes Patterns for Christmas Gift Giving #HolidayGiftIdeas #ChristmasGifts

A modern standard Barbie models a red floral summer top with a red floral wrap skirt and red ankle boots. She stands facing the viewer with her hands at her sides. — Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable PDF sewing patterns and tutorial videos for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

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When you make a set of doll clothes, it’s always nice if the child who receives them has the option to mix and match tops with skirts, pants, and jackets.

I’m a member of the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution), and this year our chapter of the DAR will be giving gifts to a service member’s family for Christmas. So as the family has a four-year-old daughter with “Barbies” and “doll clothes” on her wish list, I’ve been making a series of doll clothes that will easily mix and match, to give to this anonymous little girl.

A modern standard Barbie models a red floral summer top with a red solid colored wrap skirt and red ankle boots. She stands facing left of the viewer, and from this ankle, we can see the same red floral fabric that the bodice uses, peeking out from under the wrap of her skirt. — Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable PDF sewing patterns and tutorial videos for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

If you compare the photo at the top of today’s blog post to the photo just above this text, you’ll see that these are the same garments, but they’re reversed. Yes, you read that right– I made them reversible.

Both the strappy summer top and the wrap skirt pictured above, are from two different outfit concepts (View 5 and View 3) in the Simplicity 8281 pattern.

A modern standard Barbie models a red summer top with a red floral wrap skirt and red ankle boots. She stands with her arms spread wide, facing the viewer. — Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable PDF sewing patterns and tutorial videos for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

Making a garment reversible creates even more mix-and-match options for the doll’s ensemble.

However, most doll clothes patterns do not come with a reversible option. You have to know a little about doll clothes pattern alterations, to make them reversible.

A modern standard Barbie models a red summer top with a red wrap skirt and red ankle boots. She stands at a slight angle, looking to the left of the viewer. — Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable PDF sewing patterns and tutorial videos for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

Simplicity 8281 is one of the best patterns for creating mix-and-match wardrobes for a Barbie or similar-sized fashion doll, in my humble opinion. (If you have a favorite mix-and-match doll clothes pattern, please mention it in the comments!)

The skirt in View 2 of Simplicity 8281 is actually a separate piece from the bodice, so the outfits in views 2, 3, 5, 6 and 7 are all capable of being swapped for mix-and-match possibilities.

Here we see the vintage 8281 doll clothes sewing patterns, which were designed to fit vintage Barbie dolls, vintage Farrah Fawcett dolls, and vintage Cher dolls from the 1970s and 1980s. The outfits include: view 1 a wedding dress with long sleeves; view 2 a layered skirt with swingy halter top and simple cape; view 3 a pair of wide legged pants with swingy halter top; view 4 a summer dress with empire waist; view 5 a wrap skirt with T-shirt that has raglan sleeves; view 6 a long-sleeved tee shirt with vest and gaucho pants; view 7 a jogging suit with collared jacket and workout pants. — Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable PDF sewing patterns and tutorial videos for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

But I digress. Let’s go back to the idea of altering patterns for reversibility.

A pattern alteration is simply a change to the way the original pattern was meant to be sewn.

For example, in the image below, you can see that I’ve shortened the wrap skirt from View 5 in the original Simplicity 8281 doll clothes pattern.

A handmade traced version of a wrap skirt from Simplicity 8281 (Skirt view 5) doll clothes sewing patterns has been laid over the top of the original pattern for the wrap skirt in Simplicity 8281 vintage Barbie doll clothes sewing pattern set. We see that the person who made the handmade traced version of this wrap skirt pattern has included all the markings from the original skirt, including the grainline, the cutting instructions, and the center front line, but the traced version says right on the pattern, "alteration for shorter wrap skirt." And in fact, the hand-drawn version of the skirt pattern appears to be about two centimeters shorter than the original. — Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable PDF sewing patterns and tutorial videos for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

When you can make a single skirt pattern two different ways, you add even more options for your clothing ensemble: a long version of the skirt plus a short version of the skirt.

However shortening a wrap skirt isn’t as simple as it might seem. With a wrap skirt like this one, which is going to be sewn together at the notch (look at the left side of the pattern for the notch), if you don’t understand how seam allowances work and how wrap skirts are uniquely designed, then when you place the wrap skirt on the doll, you’ll find a strange overlap at the front of the garment.

On a blue cutting mat, a skirt with a seam running down the middle appears to have two layers: one solid red, and (beneath that) the other floral print with a red background. A pair of Fiskars stitchers little snips rest on the blue cutting mat above the wrap skirt that's in the process of being sewn. — Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable PDF sewing patterns and tutorial videos for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

To throw another wrench in the works, I’ve made my wrap skirt reversible, along with the strappy summer top.

And again, making a garment reversible takes a bit of pattern alteration know-how as well.

A woman's fingers pinch together two pieces of red fabric, one a floral print, the other a solid red fabric. Where the two pieces of fabric come together, she is turning the rough, cut edges of the fabrics in toward the inside of the garment, to form a reversible item of clothing. — Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable PDF sewing patterns and tutorial videos for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

Not enough challenges? But wait! There’s more!

My mother-in-law gave me this gorgeous vintage fabric, but all she had was this tiny little swatch.

The wrap skirt pattern for a Simplicity 8281 Barbie doll clothes sewing pattern has been laid out on a strangely-shaped piece of red floral cotton fabric. The skirt fits nicely into the curve of the fabric, but the grainline shown on the pattern is at an angle to the grainline of the fabric. Also, someone has drawn on the photo using a yellow highlighter, in the shape of a summer bodice. The outline in highlighter shows how the bodice would lie on the fabric, and it doesn't seem to fit the shape of the fabric at all, but instead the highlighter lines go off the fabric and onto the blue cutting mat upon which the whole swatch of fabric lies. — Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable PDF sewing patterns and tutorial videos for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

Now, you’re probably thinking, “You can fit that wrap skirt and top on that swatch of fabric easily.”

You’re probably imagining something like this, but with the original, longer skirt where my hand-drawn, traced version of the skirt sits, right?

Two versions of the same skirt pattern appear in the photo. One is the original wrap skirt pattern from Simplicity 8281 Barbie doll clothes sewing patterns. The other is a traced and slightly altered skirt pattern with a shorter length than the original wrap skirt pattern. The traced and altered skirt pattern lies on a very oddly shaped piece of vintage floral red fabric. The skirt pattern fills an area of fabric that's shaped sort of like an upside down anvil, with the flare of the skirt filling what would be the top portion of the anvil, if it were upright. Above this, on the swatch of red floral fabric, we can see that a solid red doll's bodice fabric has been laid out to be cut around, like a pattern. With this layout, there's plenty of spare fabric between the skirt and the bodice, plus a bit more extending beyond the doll's bodice, for making straps. — Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable PDF sewing patterns and tutorial videos for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

Not so fast, friends… See the grainline arrow? It’s that back-and-forth arrow on the original skirt pattern from Simplicity 8281. The grainline arrow is supposed to follow the grainline of the fabric. (To learn more about grainlines, please click on this link to read an older blog post about it.)

Not only that, but the skirt pattern says “Cut 2” — so yeah. That original pattern is not gonna fit! But…

The image shows a vintage red floral fabric upon which lies a "cut 2" hand-drawn skirt pattern, which is positioned at the very edge of the red floral fabric. — Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable PDF sewing patterns and tutorial videos for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

Once I re-designed the View 5 Simplicity 8281 skirt pattern with a shorter hemline, I was able to cut 2 pieces of skirt, plus a bodice, out of this beautiful red floral vintage fabric.

And, of course, I used plain red cotton for the lining, so my knowledge of pattern alteration created this amazing and wonderful mix-and-match set for Barbie, even though it was quite different from the original pattern offered in Simplicity 8281.

In this thumbnail image, the text reads "mix-N-match" with two photos below the text. The photo on the left shows a standard Mattel Barbie wearing a handmade strappy summer bodice with a handmade wrap skirt that comes to just above the knee. She also wears little red plastic ankle boots. The photo on the right shows Simplicity 8281 vintage Barbie, Cher, and Farrah Fawcett doll clothes sewing patterns. Arrows connect the bodice to one outfit for the top and another outfit for the bottom. The arrow pointing at the summer top bodice points to the View 3 and view 2 outfit, while the arrow from the wrap skirt points at the wrap skirt in view 5 of Simplicity 8281 vintage Barbie doll clothes sewing patterns. — Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable PDF sewing patterns and tutorial videos for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

For anyone who would like to expand their dolls’ wardrobes, you should really check out my “How to Alter Doll Clothes Patterns” course on the Creative Spark online learning platform. It’s designed with beginners in mind, and one of the sections of the course deals with lengthening and shortening skirts, somewhat like the alteration I made to the View 5 skirt with this vintage Simplicity 8281 doll skirt pattern.

Here’s a link to my bio page on the Creative Spark website, where you can learn more.

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 go check out my paid courses on Creative Spark, using this link.

I know I sound like a broken vintage vinyl record, but if your family is asking what you want for Christmas this year… well, for those of us who own WAY too many dolls and more fabric than a warehouse can hold, expanding your sewing knowledge (which takes up a lot less room) is always a good gift idea for the holidays!

As always, feel free to pin, like, or tweet about my free patterns and tutorials.

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

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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.