5-inch doll clothes patterns, Chelsea, Tutorials: Sewing for Dolls, Whole Costumes for Dolls

Make a halter-style dress for Chelsea dolls w/free patterns @ ChellyWood.com (available on A4 and American printer paper PDFs) #Miniatures #Mattel

Here we see a little Chelsea doll, made by Mattel for the Barbie family line of dolls. She models a dress made of red felt, multicolored cotton, and bias tape. The dress has a halter-style bodice and a straight skirt. The doll holds her hands behind her back, and she looks away from the viewer in a coy stance. Her shoes are red plastic flats, coordinating with the red colors in her dress. To make this dress, go to Chelly Wood dot com for your free doll clothes sewing patterns and tutorials.
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.

Scroll down to the second set of bullets to download the free printable PDF sewing pattern.**

Today’s doll dress will fit a wide variety of tiny 5″ to 6″ dolls. The second set of bullets will give you some idea as to which dolls can wear this little halter-style doll dress.

Before printing your patterns, you might want to take a look at this blog post, just to hear the story behind these tricky, fiddley patterns!

A Chelsea character miniature Barbie doll stands alone in a room with a spackled purple wall and a white floor. She's wearing a handmade felt and cotton dress with a high neck made from red cotton bias tape. The free doll clothes patterns for sewing this dress are found at Chelly Wood dot com.
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.

However, of the three projects in this series, this pattern is probably the easiest to sew. It doesn’t have a lining, and you really only need to know how to whipstitch and how to do a straight stitch, in order to make this miniature doll dress.

If you look at the JPG image at the bottom of today’s blog post, you’ll see that the shorter skirt version is marked with only two flowers, meaning it’s relatively easy to sew for a beginner.

*Please note: when you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include Amazon, JoAnn Fabric, Etsy, and the eBay Partner Network. As an Amazon affiliate, I earn from qualifying purchases. To learn more about how my website uses affiliate marketing, please visit the website’s Privacy Policy page.

A little Chelsea doll from Mattel (the younger sister of Barbie) stands in a classroom setting, wearing a red halter dress with a high collar. The dress has a printed skirt and felt bodice, with a collar made from red bias tape. The patterns and free tutorial video for making this little summery dress are found at ChellyWood.com.
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.

I originally designed this dress to fit Dawn dolls from Topper, but I was excited to discover that they not only fit Barbie’s little sister, Chelsea, but they look fantastic on her!

The longer version of the dress (see pattern image below) will fit the 6″ Dawn dolls, but they won’t fit Chelsea. However, if you’re good at making alterations, it wouldn’t be too hard to alter the long skirt to fit her. If you’re new to sewing, you might consider taking my “How to Alter Doll Clothes Patterns” paid course on the Creative Spark online website (scroll down to the bottom for more information on that).

This is a free, printable JPG image of a PDF sewing pattern for making a halter dress or halter top for 6 to 7 inch fashion dolls. At the bottom of the image, it says, 'for A4 print paper.' The Chelly wood dot com logo and the Creative Commons Attribution symbols appear on this image.
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 make today’s little halter style miniature dress, you’ll need some craft felt, some cotton fabric, and a bit of 1/4 inch (6 mm) wide bias tape. You’ll also need a few snaps, and I recommend size 4/0 Dritz snaps.

In my tutorial, I also mentioned Fiskars Stitchers’ scissors, which are fantastic for making tiny snips! With a dress as tiny as this one, detail precision snips are super important. I also used a Dritz fabric pencil to mark the bias tape.

A five and a half inch Mattel Chelsea doll (little sister of Barbie) models a handmade halter dress which uses red felt for the bodice and a retro print geometric shape red, white, yellow, and orange skirt. The doll stands with her hands at her sides. She wears burgundy colored plastic flats on her tiny feet. She has poofy blond hair and blue eyes.
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.

Which dolls will this dress be suitable for?

Free patterns and tutorial videos for making this little tiny dress:

If you enjoyed this blog post, and you’d like to see my videos, you might want to navigate over to my YouTube channel, ChellyWood1 to look through my playlists.

This image of a turquoise blue sewing needle pulling purple thread away from a line of cross-stitching is used as a divider between sections of a blog post.

For anyone who would like to expand their dolls’ wardrobes, you should really check out my “How to Alter Doll Clothes Patterns” course and my “Design Your Own Doll Pants Patterns from Scratch” class on the Creative Spark online learning platform. Here’s a link to my bio page on their website, where you can learn more.

This image shows four rows of artist's renderings of doll clothing items. The top row shows four different styles of pants. The second row shows four different styles of shirts. The third row shows four different styles of skirts. The fourth row shows four different styles of dresses, with skirts in long, short, and mid-length styles. The text reads at the top, "Classes in Doll Clothing Design" followed by this paragraph: "Have you ever wished you could create patterns of your own? Click on the links to Chelly's online courses below, to learn more about her paid courses in doll clothing pattern design techniques."

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.

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

You are more than welcome to share my doll clothes patterns on social media; I only ask that you tell people where the patterns come from. Here’s a JPG image of today’s free doll clothes sewing pattern for easy sharing on your favorite social media venue (this is the US specs version — scroll up to the image above for the international A4 version):

This is a free, printable JPG image of a PDF sewing pattern for making a halter dress in two lengths or halter top for 6 to 7 inch fashion dolls. At the bottom of the image, it says, 'for printing on American printer paper.' The Chelly wood dot com logo and the Creative Commons Attribution symbols appear on this image.
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.

Disclaimer/Credit/Affiliate Marketing Link:

*When you click links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include Amazon, JoAnn Fabric, Etsy, and the eBay Partner Network. As an Amazon affiliate, I earn from qualifying purchases. To learn more about how my website uses affiliate marketing, please visit the website’s Privacy Policy page.

**Please note: this is the first time I’ve ever converted one of my patterns to A4 printer paper. I may not have the measurement tool just right, but I’d love some feedback! for those of you who use A4 paper, let me know whether or not the measurement tool is printing correctly. I’m almost 100% certain that the pattern is exactly identical in size to the one on American printer paper, but I’m not sure whether or not I’ve gotten my measurement tool to match. That’s what I need a little feedback for! Feel free to leave any comments that pertain to the fitting of the dress or the measurement tool on A4 paper.

To honor the trademark rights of the doll companies mentioned in this blog post, I am including links to their websites here. Please feel free to visit their website and consider purchasing one or more of the dolls mentioned.

Chelsea and Enchantimals dolls are products offered by Mattel, which holds the registered trademark for them (™). Please visit the Mattel Toys website to learn more about their company and its trademarked toys.

Strawberry Shortcake dolls are products offered by Shortcake IP Holdings LLC, which holds the registered trademark for them (™). Please visit the Strawberry Shortcake website to learn more about their company and its trademarked toys.

Breyer dolls and horses are products offered by Breyer, which holds the registered trademark for them (™). Please visit the Breyer website to learn more about their company and its trademarked toys.

Disney princess dolls are products offered by the Disney Corporation, which holds the registered trademark for them (™). Please visit the Official Shop Disney website to learn more about their company and its trademarked toys.

Lottie dolls are manufactured and designed by Arklu (Ireland) Ltd., in Donegal, Ireland, and Arklu holds the registered trademark (™) for them in the US. Lottie dolls are distributed in the USA by Schylling, Inc. These dolls are distributed in the UK, Ireland, France, and Italy by Bigjigs Toys Ltd. Visit Lottie.com to learn more about these wonderful toys that were inspired by kids.

Dawn dolls are products offered by Topper Corporation, which once held the registered trademark for them (™). However at the time of this blog posting, these dolls are no longer in production.

Pippa dolls were produced in Great Britain by Palitoy from 1972 to 1980. Palitoy is now a defunct company, and to my knowledge the Pippa dolls have not had a revival. You can learn more about Palitoy on Wikipedia. You can learn more about these dolls at OverZone’s Pippa Dolls Archive or on the Pippa ID Parade.

Remco once held the trademark for the I Dream of Jeannie dolls, but these dolls are no longer in production. Their focus at the time of this blog post, appears to be on wrestling action figures. If you’d like to see the toys offered by Remco today, please click this link.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.