I have some new girls and have started to sew for them. They’re 16″ fashion dolls – I have three Tyler Wentworth dolls and two Alexandra Fairchild Ford dolls. (No doubt there will be more.) Here’s the first one who arrived – she’s Tyler Wentworth Opera Gala and she’s standing in front of the first of two wardrobes I’m building for the clothes of these girls:

The wardrobe is a chest from Michaels, which is standing on one side. (It’s the Large Gold Polka Dot Trunk from Ashland. That’s a Michaels Canada link, which will probably go 404 once they’ve sold out of this box, so I’ve included a screen shot of it here.) It has rope handles that knot inside – easy-peasy, I untied one and threaded it through the top eyelets to double the handle there. The eyelets on the bottom are covered by the paper lining. I put felt feet on the bottom, too.

This one was much easier to change to a wardrobe than the one I used for Barbie – and even better, the exterior print is just dots, so it doesn’t look like I turned it sideways. (If you remember the wardrobe for Barbie, the Eiffel Tower on the lid ended up on its side, so I had to paper the front, too.) Inside is one of those cosmetic storage drawer units from the dollar store, which is perfect for purses and belts. In this pic, I haven’t hung the bars for the hangers yet.

Here’s the pattern I’ve been sewing. It’s a DBDoll pattern called April Showers: Modern Trenchcoat, which has ruffled sleeves. That link is to Etsy, where I bought the pattern. (The hat, purse, and dress patterns are also available but are sold separately, which diminishes the chance of my buying them. I wish they offered a bundle of all four, but they don’t.)

It’s a very good pattern with lots of helpful suggestions for the construction. I learned some new tricks from it!

Below are my first two raincoats. The navy one on the left was made with the pattern as is. The interesting thing about 16″ dolls is that their proportions aren’t all the same (of course not!) and you can see that this coat is a bit short in the sleeves and the length for Tyler. It still needs the hem sewn in this picture, btw. (Yup, those are pins.) The fabric is a mystery-content that seems like outerwear in scale. It must have a lot of polyester because it was miserable to iron. The lining, which you can’t see, is a floral Liberty Tana Lawn.

I made some modifications for the coat on the right, cut of another mystery fabric which has a perfect pattern in scale. It’s black and white, literally one thread in each color alternating, and looks like a tiny check. It wonks out my eyes a bit to topstitch on this fabric, but it looks great in scale. (I made a suit for Barbie of it, too.) I made some modifications for this coat: I lengthened the coat by 1/2″ and moved the pocket flaps down 1/2″. I also made the lapels and collar pointed instead of rounded and changed out the ruffled sleeve for a plain one.

For that, I used the basic sleeve from Fashion Doll Clothing by Rosemarie Ionker. (That’s an Amazon link.) I traced the sleeve cap from the raincoat pattern, then used the basic sleeve from the book to draw the sleeve down to the cuff. This is a book I bought a few years ago, thinking it would have patterns for Barbie and other 11.5″ fashion dolls. Most of the patterns are actually for 16″ dolls, and the book was my first discovery of them. The patterns for smaller dolls are for Tonner dolls, like Tiny Kitty Collier, so the proportions are different than for Barbie etc. This sleeve turned out to be a teeny tiny bit too long on the raincoat, so I’ll trim it back for the next version.

This book also includes two different blocks for 16″ dolls. One fits the body sculpt of Alexandra Fairchild Ford and the other fits Tyler Wentworth. Comparing these shows that Tyler is almost 1/2″ longer in the torso, arms and legs than Alexandra Fairchild Ford. Their feet are also different sizes (AFF’s are smaller) so they can’t share shoes. Once again, people refer to 16″ dolls as if they’re all the same (like 11.5″ dolls) while in reality, there is a lot of variation.

As anticipated, the navy raincoat fits Alex perfectly. Here are the two finished raincoats, with Alexandra Fairchild Ford on the left and Tyler on the right. (AFF has a tendency to be tippy on her stand, which makes me wonder whether its proportions might be better for a doll with longer legs, like Tyler. It is her stand, though, with the AFF logo, so that’s odd.) I added thread loops for the belts at the side seams so they don’t go missing.

The raincoat has a pleat in the back and a lot of topstitching on the seams, which results in a very elegant coat. I’m not fussed about the hemming, but used fusible interfacing to stabilize the edge of the grey one and that came out better. I’ll play with some other finishes.

Because, of course, there will be more raincoats. I have a longer pink one with the rounded lapels and ruffled sleeves – so my blonde Tyler can have her own raincoat – and plan to make an even longer fake-leather one for my third Tyler doll, who is going to dress with a bit more verve. I’ll show you those when they’re done, and we’ll see what happens after that. It’s easy to look at my fabric stash and imagine even more combinations!

Here’s another picture of the wardrobe in progress. It’s good that I bought them BOGO as clearly Tyler and Alex need their own stashes of clothes and shoes. It’ll be good to keep them separated, though the girls will probably borrow each other’s purses.

I have to replace the hanger bar in this one – I used a bamboo skewer (painted with marker) just the way I did with the Barbie wardrobe, but it’s too flimsy. I’ll replace it with a wooden dowel. Tied inside the lid (or door) is an organizer from the dollar store which is perfect for shoes etc. The dividers can be removed when I need a larger space. I thought of gluing it in, but Mr. Math was skeptical that any glue would hold that hard plastic, especially with a lot of opening and closing. I glued in the ribbon instead, then covered a little block at the bottom in the interior wallpaper. That raises the organizer so the lid/door of the case closes more easily. This solution works very well.

And now, back to my raincoats!