Sewing for the Dolls

In a previous post I mentioned that I had been doing a lot of sewing for Barbie and Ken, and also a lot of time browsing Pinterest for American Girl patterns.  When my two granddaughters came to visit recently, they brought their American Girl dolls so I would have a model to make clothes for them.  Oldest has a Mary Ellen doll, which is a regular 18" American Girl doll, and youngest has a 14-1/2" Wellie Wishers doll named Willa.  Most of the time, doll clothes are fun and quick to sew, and I am excited to find that there are so many patterns online for these dolls.  Grandson also asked for some more clothes for Ken, so I guess my work is cut out for me. 

The two oldest want to sew doll clothes, and oldest and I worked together to make a new outfit for Mary Ellen over the weekend.  Grandson is anxiously waiting for his turn.  Even with two complete workstations in my sewing room, there seems to be a fair amount of competition for available sewing space, since their mom needs to sew as well.  As entranced as they are by the features on the Bernina 750, Oldest learned quickly that it was perhaps not the best machine to learn on.  She quickly moved to the 440 to finish her outfit after the machine kept swallowing the little pieces. 

The first day of summer vacation, which was also the day after the grands and their parents arrived, I sewed for the dolls while they were at the beach.  It was a lovely, relaxing day.  Normally, I need about a week to decompress after school is out, but I did ok this year with just one day.  The remote teaching from home wasn't nearly as stressful as a month of testing - at least not for me.  First, I made Mary Ellen a dress from an old McCall's pattern I had in my stash, and it ended up too big in the bodice, which was disappointing.  This morning I took it apart and took about an inch out of the bodice - quite a lot for a doll with a 10-1/2" waistline.  It's still a little big, but it's much better.

Youngest chose this fancy fabric for her dress.  I found a cute pattern online for a 14" doll, and after some experimentation (meaning I threw the first bodice away,) I came up with a dress that fits her well.  The first time, I tried the pull-through method for making the bodice, where you sew the armholes and the neckline and then pull the back through the shoulder seam to the front, but these pieces are just too small to pull the bulk of the back pieces through, especially considering the bulk created by two layers of fabric.  I ended up partially sewing the armholes and completing the rest of the seam by hand.  I thought this little dress turned out pretty cute and Youngest was pretty happy with it, which, after all, was the whole point.

Ken also got a new shirt, but he must be off with Barbie right now, because I can't find him, or the shirt, so more Ken clothes in a later post.  Grandson liked Ken's swimsuit, so I had to hurry and make Ken his own pair of shorts.  Every time I turned around, Ken was on the floor naked.

On Saturday afternoon, I made Willa another little outfit.  I used the basic Barbie skirt idea and changed the dimensions to 5" x 13".  This is honestly a 15-minute project.  The fabric is one of the scraps from the hospital gowns I made a few weeks ago.  The top was a nightmare.  The fabric is a quarter yard of knit I bought at Joann's before Christmas.  It did not want to sew.  The machine kept skipping stitches, and I couldn't find a ball point needle, although I know I have several packages of them somewhere.  I finally used a piece of paper in the seam to keep the fabric from getting grabbed by the needle.  It made a 30-minute project into an hour-long one, at least.  The pattern for the top is the Pixie Faire trendy t-shirt pattern for 14-1/2" dolls, but it is honestly a bit too tight.  Next time, I will add maybe 1/2" to front and back in the width to make it fit better.

So, I'm keeping busy.  Lots of other projects on the list while the grands are here.  We'll see how many get accomplished, but we're making good progress so far.  We've been checking things off the list pretty regularly, and as far as I know, no one has been bored or missed any of the activities we can't do because of all the closures due to Covid-19.  So far, so good.