Barbie Sized Creations

Twas a very merry Barbie Christmas over here. My four year old enjoys playing with Barbie sized princesses and also Barbie. She received a Barbie camper, a Barbie sized house and a few new dolls. The house came furnished, but with only one bed. I could see this might be an issue. Also, sadly lacking any blankets.

My first creation was to cut some fleece as blankets. This took no time at all.  I cut fleece in a rectangle and a couple larger rectangles to be folded as sleeping bags or just larger blankets. 

I looked at Barbie beds other people had made and that is still on our list to do. Maybe even some bunks for the smaller Chelsea sized dolls. I did find these little cots.

I thought it was really quite ingenious. On a trip to JoAnns, I found a 10 pack of 12" 1/4" dowel for the frames and Popsicle sticks for the ends. Dipping into my fabric stash, I quickly put together the fabric parts of four cots and small matching pillows. It was nearly dinner time and I figured it would be easier to enlist my husband's help for the woodworking.

Together we spent about two hours, much long than I expected, finding the right bolts and nuts, drilling holes for aforementioned bolts, and drilling pilot holes. As we assembled the first cot with wood glue, it appeared quite wobbly. We decided to just add the Popsicle sticks to the ends of each dowel first and made sure it could lay flat.  After the glue dried, we inserted the bolts to complete the cots. 

I still think the cots are very cute and nice that they fold flat. But I think it's a bigger project than it seems and one wrong step or leaning breaks the Popsicle sticks. We have had two cots need repair already from misplaced body parts. Fortunately, they can be glued. New rule for the cots is that they can only be in or on the house, not on the floor.

 After receiving money for Christmas, my daughter bought herself a Ken doll. Apparently, Ken likes to take baths in the Barbie house and would really like a bathrobe. Sewing for Barbie and Ken is not really pleasant, but I also accept that these tiny things do not need to be perfect or have perfectly finished seams.

For the robe, I decided to forgo proper sleeve construction and simply traced around Ken's open armed body for a pattern.  There was a back piece and two front pieces.  After hemming up the sleeves, I sewed them up and considered being done.  But then I found some lycra binding intended for fleece (that matched!) and bound the whole robe.  Finally I sewed more binding together to make a tie and attached it along the whole back part of robe for security.  Due to it being out of thin fleece, it worked very well.

The Barbie camper included a swimming pool, yet no one had their swimsuits on.  I made a couple swim suits which didn't work very well.  The best one is a one piece I cut around a doll out of a four way stretch material.  No edges are finished and it is easy to get on and off.  Ken got a multipurpose gym shorts/swim suit by tracing his pants as a pattern.  That worked well.

Some of the smaller girls needed new dresses.  The lack of footwear for flatfooted Skipper and Stacy is disappointing for us too.  The dressing, undressing and hair styling is what my daughter enjoys.  It's hard to have many choices if they don't exist.  But two new dresses I could make.  The Skipper and Barbie dresses are very easy to make.  I had made Barbie dresses a few years ago and followed the same method.

 Finally, every evening the dolls need to sleep.  The house sometimes is a hotel and there's only so much space.  It's very sweet how my daughter gets them all into bed with their shoes under the beds or cots and tucks them in. Because of the camper idea too, I made sleeping bags.  I followed the basic instructions from here with my own dimensions.  My first bag was out of two layers of flannel and was rather bulkly.  Then I used one layer of flannel and one layer of quilting cotton.  I liked these the most.  I did tuck in some batting as a pillow, but the pillow got negative reviews from one daughter.  Finally I made two mini bags for the Chelsea sized dolls out of two layers of quilting cotton with no pillow.  They are all pretty cute and roll up nicely.

Doll Sleeping Bag

My 5th grade daughter was collecting items representative of a book she was reading.  One item she needed was a sleeping bag.  I suggested taking some felt and rolling it up to appear like a sleeping bag.  She suggested I make a sleeping bag fit for her American Girl Doll.  My son even suggested using an old jacket to have the material be more authentic.

These kinds of projects are usually what I like to do best: fulfill a need with what's at home and make it quick.

Somehow I wasn't feeling too excited about this project.  Perhaps the fact that it was 8:00pm had something to do with it.  Also, I was considering how to make the sleeping bag and had looked at tutorials a while back with zippers.  I didn't have the right size zipper and it would be an even bigger project.

Finally my wise daughter told me to just make it like a bag without a zipper or an opening.

When we were looking through the stash, she liked the orange waterproof fabric I had from diaper making days.  I had some matching orange microfiber fabric for a lining.  And thinking of it as a bag helped a lot.

I laid out the fabric and using the doll as a guide, very carefully cut around her to make the sleeping bag.  I added a head rest and cut out lining fabric too.

It went together very quickly. I simply left a small opening in the bottom of the lining fabric and sewed the outside to the inside together with the head rest tucked inside.

I did top stitch around the top edge allowing the the inner lining to roll a bit to the outside.

More Doll Quilts

After making doll sized quilts for my girls and seeing how much fun a tiny quilt is to make, I decided to make another and then another to sell.  There is more flexibility in these sized quilts than a mug rug, but they are still quick to complete.

First I copied the wonky star quilt and used all the colors of my choosing.  This quilt ended up being about 13.5" by 20.5".

















I enjoyed more dense quilting as you can see on the back of the quilt.

Back of Wonky Star Quilt

Then I used the doll fabric I thought I was going to use for my older daughter's doll quilt and just added strips here and there to make up the size.  This quilt ended up being about 14" by 20".

Back of Doll Quilt

This time I made swirls in the white and used a verigated all over the rest.

Doll quilts

My girls received doll beds for Christmas and they came with boring light blue bedding. I offered to make doll sized quilts for the new beds. 

My younger daughter chose pink and purple and blue, but not green. She didn't have any other ideas, so I just tried things out. I started with a pink wonky star with 4" squares. Then I made a purple one. The two stars seemed to be enough.  I decided to add stripes in between and also on the sides. For the in between stripes, I sliced them into two pieces and inserted a white strip for something different. I like the pretty colors and the bright white. 

She also chose ladybug fabrics. I have two ladybug prints.  I suggested these would work well for the second bed in her bunk bed. We added red hearts and white. I snuck in a little blue and black also. I wanted to try wonky "flying geese."  I just started with a color and added a white strip on side and then another to form a triangle. I also made wonky log cabins (beginning with a 3" square) on the other side finishing with a strip of white. 

For my older daughter, I thought we might use leftover fabrics from her house quilt. But she requested that I match her bed quilt. Fortunately I was able to find all the fabric scraps and figured out the pattern again. I used a 4" square and 1.5" strips and a 1.5" mini square. I started with six blocks, then added another set, then added some more until I was up to twelve blocks. 

These small quilts were possibly even more fun to make than mug rugs. I also enjoyed planning out the quilting.  Beginning with the ladybug quilt, I tried triangles and lines around the flying geese. For the blocks, I did different things like zig zags, wavy lines, hearts, pebbles, and even drew a ladybug on the black.

The pink and purple star quilt was next. Starting in the center white strip, I made swirls and a few pebbles. Looking at each section and trying different patterns was neat. Knowing whatever I chose I wouldn't have to duplicate on a big quilt was liberating and allowed me to do more dense quilting. 

After getting my older daughter's input for her doll's quilt, I incorporated swirls, zig zags, and wavy lines as well as some details for the mini squares. It was really cool working on this mini quilt replicating her bed quilt as hers was really my first real quilt. It was so easy putting this one together and knowing the many steps instead of figuring it out as I went.  I had also just learned free motion quilting and only quilted some of the parts of her quilt with squiggles and butterfly outlines while others I just outlined the rectangles.