As you can see in the image above, the McCall’s 2970 miniature fashion doll wardrobe pattern was designed to fit a number of different six to seven inch fashion dolls. But this pattern came out in the early 1970’s. A lot of dolls have been made since then that may very well fit the clothes in this pattern.
Today’s blog post addresses how well the McCall’s 2970 doll clothes patterns fit 7 inch Lottie dolls, 6 inch Strawberry Shortcake dolls from the early 2000’s, and vintage Stacie dolls from the 1990’s. Future blog posts will address additional dolls beyond these three.
So if you’re wanting to know whether or not this pattern fits the 6 inch American Girl dolls or another tiny doll, please subscribe to my blog for notifications about future blog posts.
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Let’s begin with Lottie dolls, which are manufactured in the United Kingdom by Arklu. These are a seven inch doll, so they’re sort of unique among dolls (although it may be possible to find modern Obitsu or Blythe dolls in this size).
Feel free to comment on dolls you think may match Lottie in body measurements.
In Figure A, you can see that the View B dress from this McCall’s 2970 doll clothes pattern almost touches the ground, but not quite. I think, in terms of fit, this is a good length for Lottie.
Figure B demonstrates that the sleeves are three-quarter length on Lottie. These are a dolman sleeve, so I’m not sure how much you would want to adjust their length. Making them shorter would probably work better than making them longer.
Then, if you have a look at Figure C above, you’ll see that the back closure fits Lottie nicely. I used two snaps here, and I felt it was a good fit. Could you use Velcro? Maybe, but you’d probably have to trim the Velcro to a thin, narrow piece.
Next, let’s have a look at my Strawberry Shortcake doll from 2006…
In Figure D above, it looks like this little View B dress from McCall’s 2970 is a perfect fit for my Lemon Meringue doll, right?
But take a look at Figure E. My hand is pulling her skirt down so that you can see how much extra fabric there is, at the bottom of the skirt. It’s just a wee bit too long. Do you see that? I mean, it’s not excessively too long, but it’s not just right either.
And in Figure F, with Lemon Meringue’s hand up in the air, we can tell that the sleeves are a little too short. The bodice seems a bit bulky on her too, due to the fact that Dawn dolls (for whom this pattern was primarily designed) are busty six inch fashion dolls.
With even the slightest knowledge of alterations, I think most people could create a better fit for a 6 inch Strawberry Shortcake doll, using this pattern. But yeah, it’s not an ideal fit if you just follow the pattern as-is.
The third and final doll we’re going to look at this week is my 1990’s version of Stacie, Barbie’s little sister.
In Figure G, we see that Stacie looks nice in this View B dress from McCall’s 2970, so that’s promising.
As we compare Figures G and H, it’s easy to tell that it fits her at the neckline, and the sleeves have that three-quarter length look once again, like we saw on Lottie. If you like a three-quarter length sleeve, that’s not a problem.
But it’s in Figure I that we start to notice the length discrepancy. This skirt isn’t quite a maxi length on Stacie. It’s not calf-length either. I’m not quite sure what to call this length.
However, if you’re good at making pattern alterations, lengthening a rectangular skirt is certainly easy to do. I’ve included an image of my traced pattern from the View B dress below, so you can see what we’re working with.
That image comes from an earlier blog post, in which I talked about the weird design of the bodice. So if you’re thinking about making McCall’s 2970 for a doll, you might go back to check out that earlier post, using this link.
I talked a lot about making alterations in today’s blog post. If you’d like to learn how to make alterations to your doll clothes patterns, go have a look at the class I teach on that subject. This link will help you find it.
Questions: What tiny dolls do you sew for? Are there any small dolls you’d like to add to your collection? If so, which ones?
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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.