For your free patterns and tutorial videos, please scroll down to the second set of bullets.

Today’s dress-making tutorial video and free sewing pattern are for more advanced sewists. You can see that I’ve given the pattern five flowers on my difficulty scale.

To learn more about how the difficulty scale works, please click here.

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I first released this pattern to fit a lesser-known vintage 13 inch doll from the 1960’s, named Judy Littlechap, but as you can see in these photos it will fit this 17.5 inch Barbie, along with a number of other, similar-sized dolls.

There’s a full list of all the dolls that will fit into this dress in the first set of bullets below. The shoe pattern and its tutorial is included in today’s post, but those shoes won’t fit your 17-inch Barbie, I’m afraid.

I recommend using a satin fabric, or satin-like fabric for this project, and if you want some of my pink satin fabric, there are fabric remnants available in my online store, for what I hope is a very fair price. Let me know if you’d like some but the price is too high. I’ll make adjustments.

Satin is not easy to work with, and that’s why today’s pattern comes with a five-flower difficulty scale mark.

We’ll also be adding a zipper to the back, another challenging feature to any sewing project.

I bought my 3-inch (7 cm) white zipper from Zipperstop on Etsy. I used white so you could easily see the zipper against the pink fabric, but I recommend that you try to find a zipper that matches your fabric better.

One of the trickiest parts of this dress is going to be making the pleats, but I made the skirt a little too wide at the back closure area, which should allow you a bit of room for error.

If you’ve never made a dress with pleats before, be prepared for a challenge!

One more thing… I mentioned in my tutorial video the Fiskars precision scissors I use, when I’m clipping my seams. It’s especially helpful to use these with satin because it’s such a slippery fabric! If you don’t already own a pair of Fiskars 5-inch stitchers’ scissors, I do recommend buying some.

In today’s video I also mentioned a small hole puncher, the lightbox I use for marking darts, a Sharpie marker, and a Dritz fabric pencil. Those links should help you locate each of those items, if you have an interest in buying them.

Today’s dress pattern will fit these dolls:

• Lammily First Edition dolls (from Lammily LLC)
• Vintage Judy Littlechap 13 inch dolls (from Remco)
• 13 inch My First Barbie dolls (from Mattel)
• 15 1/2-inch dolls like many of the Tonner fashion dolls (a very snug fit — maybe use stretchy fabric)
• 15 1/2-inch dolls like the Little Miss Matched dolls (also from Tonner)
• 15 1/2-inch dolls like the Clea Bella dolls
• 16-inch dolls like the Alexandra Fairchild Ford dolls
• 17-inch dolls like the Dreamtopia Endless Hair Kingdom Barbie

Here are your free, printable PDF sewing patterns and tutorial videos for making the dress shown at the top of this page:

• Free printable PDF sewing pattern for the satin dress with bow
• Tutorial video for making the dress
• How to do a whipstitch
• How to do a backstitch
• How to do a baste stitch
• How to choose fabric
• How to tie a knot using a needle and thread
• How to press seams open, using a hot iron

For more of my free tutorials, be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel, ChellyWood1.

Here’s a JPG image of today’s skirt pattern, which you are free to pin on Pinterest. Doing so helps bring traffic to my website, which in turn, helps me earn money through the viewing of ads on my site. So please share!

Look, I know you’ve probably already heard about it, but my “How to Alter Doll Clothes Patterns” course on the Creative Spark online learning platform will teach you how to alter pants, skirts, dresses, and shirts too. If you haven’t looked into it yet, you can click here to learn more.

I also have a new course on the Creative Spark Online Learning platform which teaches you how to design your own doll pants patterns from scratch, including leggings, overalls, and fly-front jeans. Click here to check out that new course, which is only $19.99!

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.

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.

Disclaimer/Credit/Affiliate Marketing Link:

*ChellyWood.com earns money by linking to Amazon, eBay, Michaels, Etsy, and other online affiliate programs. Links provided above may be affiliate links. For a full list of my affiliate programs, and to understand how cookies are used to help this website earn money, please see my “Privacy Policy” page.

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.

The 13-inch Judy Littlechap dolls were only produced by Remco for one year, and by the end of 1963, the whole family of Remco Littlechap dolls were discontinued. Today, Remco still produces toys, but the Littlechap family of dolls, which included Doctor John Littlechap, his wife Lisa Littlechap, teenage daughter Judy Littlechap, and younger sister, Libby Littlechap, are no longer available in stores. You can, however, find and collect all of them at very reasonable prices, on eBay. Visit the Remco website to see what toys and games they offer today.

Little Miss Matched is a Tonner doll. Chelly Wood and ChellyWood.com are not affiliated with the Tonner brand of dolls or the company that produced them. Little Miss Matched and other Tonner dolls were created and produced by Robert Tonner for Tonner Doll Company, Inc., which holds the trademark rights to them (™). At the time of this blog post, the Tonner Doll Company no longer produces dolls, but you can learn more about them at this link or purchase collectible Tonner dolls on eBay or through other online auction sales.

Clea Bella dolls were created by Christina Bougas, of the Bella Productions Doll Company, and she often signed her dolls “Bogie” on the back of the doll’s head or neck. These “Bogie” dolls were often designed as theater characters or ballerinas. Chelly Wood and ChellyWood.com are not affiliated with Clea Bella or other dolls designed by Christina Bougas, nor are they affiliated in any way with the Bella Productions Doll Company. At the time of this blog post, I was only able to find Clea Bella dolls on eBay, and Wikipedia’s information dates back to 2017. So although Christina Bougas probably still holds the trademark rights to her dolls (™), I’m not sure how to contact the Bella Productions Doll Company. If you know more than I do about this doll company, please leave a helpful comment.

Alexandra Fairchild Dolls were created by the Madame Alexander Doll Company, which holds the trademark rights to these dolls (™). Chelly Wood andChellyWood.com are not affiliated with the Alexander Fairchild Dolls or the Madame Alexander brand of dolls, but Chelly enjoys designing clothes that will fit their dolls. To learn more about the highly prized and collectible dolls made by the Madame Alexander Doll Company, please visit their website at this link.

Dreamtopia Endless Hair Kingdom 17-inch Barbie dolls and My First Barbie 13 inch 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.

Lammily dolls were created by Nickolay Lamm, the CEO of Lammily LLC, which holds the trademark rights to these dolls (™). Chelly Wood andChellyWood.com are not affiliated with the Lammily LLC company or the Lammily brand of dolls, but in 2014 Chelly contracted with them to design the “Winter Wonderland” and “Cozy Wear” sewing patterns for their dolls. Because of her contract agreement with Lammily LLC, Chelly does not specifically design doll clothes patterns to fit the Lammily brand of dolls to post on the ChellyWood.com free pattern website. Instead, if some of her patterns which were designed to fit similar-sized dolls happen to also fit the Lammily dolls, she adds a link to that pattern to her Lammily gallery of free doll clothes patterns. This agreement is designed to encourage people to purchase patterns from the Lammily doll company so their remarkable doll business will thrive. To learn more about Lammily dolls and the positive impact they have on children’s body images, please click here. To purchase one of the many sewing patterns offered by Lammily LLC, please click here. To shop for a Lammily doll, please click here.