Babs Gets Casual & Then Fancy

To add to the collection of clothes we started last year, I made a few more outfits for my niece's birthday this year.

I patterned some of the outfits after the clothes I played with as a kid. Some turned out great and a few failed. I didn't finish one because I kept getting frustrated about this:

What does this represent? Notice the empty needle. Dozens and dozens of times I didn't leave a long enough tail on my top thread and it would pull out of the needle. I'd have to thread and re-thread and well, really, other than unpicking, that is my least favorite part about sewing. On to the clothes...

This was supposed to be a cute t-shirt to go with the skirt below. I failed on that, but managed to make a cute casual skirt instead. The fabric comes from the sleeve of an old t-shirt (part of a skirt project for me I've yet to post). I decided it needed a little more flair, so I added the design with some black fabric paint.

My absolute favorite cargo pants bit the dust. Well, truthfully I got too fat for them. I had them for a decade and not caring whether they were in style or not I hung on to them hoping I'd fit in them once more. Nope. I decided to make my son some pants out of them, but made a huge cutting error and left that an impossibility. So, why not Barbie clothes? I think of this as a sort of rugged kind of hippie type of skirt. Something that should be work in a field of flowers or something. I liked the rough edge, but wanted to make it look at little cuter, so I added the zig zag stitching in a contrasting thread color. And the pocket is useless because it is glued on, but still cute.

Here's where the doll can get fancy. This fabric was just from my scraps stash. I once again made a cutting error (just eyeballing is not always a good idea), and that is where the red piece came in. I think it was a good mistake to make.

And in case she gets cold, Barbie can throw this red shawl on that brings out the red, but keeps the polka dots along the trim. The unfinished outfit also will go well with the shawl when it gets done...someday when I can keep the thread in the stinkin' machine!

Recycled Barbie Clothes

As to not leave my other 5 year old niece out, my sister and I had a "sewing date" with her for her birthday. My sister is done having kids and was getting rid of bags and bags of clothes. Having seen my mom make baby doll clothes out of recycled clothes, I suggest my sister save some for our Barbie clothes project. I think everyone involved was pleased with the results.
What started as this...
Ended as this...
The old outfits and new outfits together.
My sister made these.
And I made these.
These clothes were much easier to sew than the ones I did from scratch. Already having finished edges and coordinating trims made the project go quite fast. It was fun to be able to make my neice doll clothes out of something that she once wore.

Barbie Clothes

My husband's family trades names for Christmas. We each get a limited budget. Too limited I think, but it has caused me (or inspired me, anyway) to bust out my sewing machine (and maybe finish some projects. I got the cheapest Barbie I could and decided to make clothes for her. I thought it would be fun and easy, but still slightly challenging because New Barbie is not shaped like Old Barbie - and I wasn't going to detach my niece's gift from the box backing to size her.
The first thing I did was gather up my old Barbie clothes, my scrap fabric, and an old Barbie so I could sort of try the clothes on something.

I traced the old items (and used part of a pattern I found online for one of the dress tops).
Here are the old school pieces of clothing with their new counter part. Incidentally, most of the old clothes here were made by my mom.
I was excited to put my little labels inside each item.
So, here they are... I really liked the polka-dot skirt. I need to make a top to match it still. This was the first thing I sewed.Next up are the rest. On the top row are all the uses for the black dress. Barbie can go to a Halloween party as a wizard/witch or have a night on the town with her boa around her shoulders (which also can be worn as sleeves).
On the bottom we have a party girl or something outfit. The sluttier the Barbie outfit, the easier to make! Actually, the pants were easy too, but my fabric chose was not easy to sew. The next one is for night time Barbie - some PJs. and lastly, a nice dress. The top of this is not perfect, but I am hoping it will look a little better on the new shaped Barbie.

Things to change for my next batch of clothes - have the actual doll that will be wearing the clothes easily accessible, pick my fabric more carefully so that it is easy to sew, and use mini snaps not velcro.