I made a SUPER CUTE Valentine’s Day jacket for Barbie with vintage Advance Barbie Patterns 9939! #ValentinesDay #SewVintage

The tiny green arrow points at a strangely M-shaped sleeve pattern. The yellow arrow shows where the pattern for the yoke has been torn at the bottom of its S-curve. The jacket front has been torn at the sleeve attachment area (which is open at the shoulder but closed at the underarm) and along the neckline. A pink arrow points at the sleeve opening of the jacket while the turquoise blue arrow points at the neckline tear. The skirt pattern is clearly an A-line skirt, but it, too, has a tear along the hemline. These pattern pieces rest on a green cutting board next to the envelope for the Advance 9939 doll clothes sewing pattern, where we see a drawing of a brunette pony tail Barbie modeling a yellow version of the business suit these patterns will make. — 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 I first got this Advance 9939 vintage pattern set for Barbie, and I took all the patterns out of the envelope, I took one look at this jacket and thought, “Oh boy. That’s not good.”

The green arrow in the image above shows how weird that sleeve looks. Why on earth would someone design a sleeve like a letter M? That’s just strange.

If you look closely at the yellow arrow, you’ll see that the yoke/lining is torn. There’s no telling how long it should be. So again, that’s not good.

And then the blue and pink arrows show where the sleeve and neckline of the jacket’s bodice have been torn. So what the heck???

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So…

Let me just say that the Advance 9939 doll clothes sewing pattern is probably not for the beginners out there. Yes, my final product turned out adorable, but I made some major adjustments to it as I went along. Furthermore, nothing about this pattern was intuitive.

Figure one shows a woman's fingers pressed toward the center of the M-shaped top of the sleeve, where she is gathering the fabric. Figure two shows that she has stitched this gathered area to the inside of the bodice's sleeve opening, with right sides together. Figure three shows that she has done the same with the other sleeve. Figure four shows how she tried to attach the S-shaped lining yokes to the front of the garment, but it isn't fitting properly. — 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.

As you’ll see in Figure 1 at the top of the image above, you have to gather the underarm area of this jacket’s sleeve, which is really bizarre-o. If a human person had to wear a sleeve that was gathered at the underarm, it would feel so wonky–I don’t even know how a person could get through their day with that wonky underarm gather!

Moving on to Figure 2 above… You have to make sure that your gathered arm pit matches the oval shape of that weirdy-weird sleeve hole. Again, what the heck?!

But as you can see, I made it function. (See Figure 3.) Twice, even! But I kept thinking, “This can’t be right. Something’s seriously wrong here.”

Then, when I got to the part where I had to attach the burgundy-colored yokes, I knew something was definitely wrong. It didn’t help that I had been working with a torn pattern. I’d already closed off the shoulders above the weirdy-weird M-shaped sleeves, but my yokes didn’t look like they were going to fit. So at this point, I tossed out those yokes and designed my own lining.

Those horseshoe shapes (see Figure 5 below) are where I cut out a duplicate of the jacket’s bodice pattern, but then I enlarged the arm holes, making sure they would fit around the weirdy-weird sleeves on the outer fabric (shown in Figure 6).

Figure 5 shows a pink lining for the View 1 jacket from Advance 9939, but horse-shoe shapes have been cut from the arm holes. Figure 6 shows the jacket's outer fabric has been sewn together in its entirety, but there's still a raw edge around the jacket's neck, front closure, and hem areas. Figure 7 shows a woman's fingers stitching the pink lining to the jacket's neckline. Figure 8 shows the woman has sewn the pink lining's front closure to the right side of the jacket's front opening area. — 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.

As you can see in Figure 7 above, I then attached the lining to the right side of the jacket’s neckline first, followed by the jacket’s front closure (shown in Figure 8). I sealed off the shoulders of this now-mostly-attached pink lining.

I did not, however, close off the bottom “hem” area until after I had inverted the lining, so it was on the inside of the jacket. Of course I clipped my seams before inverting.

Then, as you can see below, I once again made my own alteration to the Advance 9939 doll clothes pattern by going with a Velcro closure rather than two rows of snaps down the front.

In figure one, the vintage Barbie wears the jacket, but someone holds open the garment to show that it is being closed with Velcro. In figure two, we see a close-up of the teeny-tiny pink buttons that form two rows down the front of the closed jacket. In Figure three, the beautiful vintage bubble cut brunette Barbie doll models the jacket with its matching skirt once again. — 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’ve ever seen other sewists use teeny-tiny doll buttons, like the ones on my pretty little Bubble Cut Barbie’s jacket, and you’ve wondered where they get tiny buttons like that, this link will help you find them.

And overall, I think the jacket from the View 1 business suit from Advance 9939 turned out really beautiful in the end, but as you can tell by my blog post, it was not at all easy, nor was it intuitive to sew this thing.

I made a lot of alterations!

A vintage bubble cut brunette (brownette) barbie models a handmade A-line skirt with a double-breasted jacket that has three-quarter length sleeves and two vertical rows of pink itty bitty buttons going down the front of the jacket. Both the jacket and the skirt are made of white cotton dotted with tiny red and pink hearts, and gold glitter delicately adds a splash of glow to the fabric of the skirt and jacket, making the whole suit irresistible! — 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 wowza! It really looks fantastic!

If you would like to learn how to make alterations to your doll clothes patterns, scroll down below the blue sewing needle with purple X-shaped threads, to learn more about my “How to Alter Doll Clothes Patterns” online course.

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.

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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” classes on the Creative Spark online learning platform. Here’s my bio page on their website, where you can learn more.

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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.