As mentioned yesterday, I have a lot of unfinished projects on my sewing table, and many of them are for the girls. It seems that I fiddle endlessly with the cheap pattern downloads from Etsy – the ones that are scans of older commercial patterns – getting the printed size right, then messing with the fit. They really aren’t that good of a deal in the end, considering the time involved. The plan is to just stop with them.

To that end, I found some new resources. First of all, the big four commercial pattern companies have introduced more patterns for 11/12″ dolls, and they’re selling digital downloads of them. This is a very cool development, since they always print out perfectly at 100%. Here’s a new one, McCalls 8544, which includes versions of three familiar vintage Barbie ensembles. The pink dress is Enchanted Evening, the checkered coat and dress is Poodle Parade, and the blue poof dress is Gay Parisienne.

Simplicity 9869 is one of the patterns that features a decade of fashion. This one is for the 1970’s. I wish they’d make the others available, too, having spent a chunk of time in December fiddling with a scanned version of the 1960’s one. I’ll show you that next.

Here’s the page with the PDF patterns for doll clothes. It’s a mix of patterns for American Girl and Barbie, but there are more fashion doll patterns than has been the case for a while. There are often sales on this site, so keep a look-out. I got the digital downloads of the patterns I bought for just $3 each in December.

If you’re a fan of the vintage Barbie outfits and would like to reproduce them yourself, I found another site for you. This designer has patterns for many of the vintage outfits, available as PDF downloads. I haven’t tried any of them, but it looks like a great resource. His site is called Tailored Doll Patterns and there are patterns for Barbie and other dolls. Here’s his site.

Here’s his pattern for Enchanted Evening, for example.

I’m still searching for the perfect suit for the girls, so I’ve gone back to my Japanese pattern books by Katie Mitsubashi. I’m making a test version of one from this book now and will show it to you when it’s done.