A No-Sew Barbie Dress, and a Young Fashion Designer

Ever since our fabulous Barbie dress design workshop at the Indianapolis Children's Museum, I have been quietly whiling away my hours attempting to create a similar design from scratch-ish. I knew that I wanted the dress to have that same simplicity and ease of construction, but knowing what you want a garment to look like isn't really enough if you don't actually know much about patternmaking.

Also, Barbie has really skewed dimensions. It took a while.

Although I still have some corrections to make to my pattern before I share it with you (it needs to be 1/4" wider, I do believe, and the hem should curve more, and I might make it a little longer), my latest mock-up was accurate enough that Sydney and I were able to spend a happy afternoon actually, you know, USING it.

Part of my intention with this pattern is to make it simple enough for even a small child to use, but I ended up cutting out and constructing several dresses all by myself anyway, because Sydney remained focused on one thing only:

DESIGN AND EMBELLISHMENT.

Glitter glue:

 A lot more glitter glue:

 It actually took this particular dress over a day to dry, on account of the two entire tubes of glitter glue that it sports.

Buttons and baubles:

 And a generous helping of hot glue to make it all stick:

And then, a fashion show!

 
 
 
I made these out of felt just so that they'd be quick and easy as a spur-of-the-moment project in which Syd walked up to me as I was working on something else and said, "Let's make doll clothes now!", but once the pattern is all settled and she's actually used it a few times, I plan to open up the entire world of my stash fabric to her, and then I think that the young designer will really be in runway heaven.