Material Girl

At the Youth Center we have a Barbie House and dolls for the girls, and sometimes boys to play with. After discovering the items of clothing either ripping apart or growing legs and walking out the door, we had far too many dolls with no clothes. With having no budget to remedy this fact, I have taken to the web and my pile of scrap cloth to fashion up some new fashions.

Androgynous Ken sporting custom jeans 

Floral tie top

I would have thought Pintrest would be oozing with free patterns or tutorials on Barbie clothes. Yet I found there to be only a few sites with free patterns or tutorials. Yes they had some for pay, but like I said, no money for this kind of stuff.

Some of the tutorials were using a surger to help out on the fraying of fabric. If you didn't have one, they said to do a zigzag around all edges. I wonder how many of them tried it that way because it caused mondo problems in working with the pieces of fabric which then resulted in clothing being too small. I rather have a little more give in each piece as the kids are not gentle in applying the clothing. With all the form fittedness, I think this is what causes the seams to be stressed and fall apart.

I am laughing as I work with this new project/interest as I HATED Barbies with a passion when a little girl. I was very content in dressing up my stuffed bears and playing mommy any day. My own mother use to sew bedding for the wooden craft fair cradles or purchase bear clothes from them. If Eliza does pick bears over Barbies, I think I will have a MUCH easier time sewing for something I don't have to incorporate room for hips and breasts.