Barbie Clothes

My latest endeavor has been to cloth all of my daughter's naked Barbies.  They have clothes, but the clothes Mattel makes border on scandalous (short short skirts and short short dresses, not to mention totally unrealistic profession outfits).  I wanted Barbie to have pants and they hardly ever sell Barbie pants, and I wanted t-shirts and longer skirts and dresses that went at least to the knees.  Thus began my attempts at finding patterns to make Barbie clothes.  I found one at Joannes and got it on sale at a fair price, but was disappointed to find that the pants pattern was not wide enough for Barbie's big hips, even though it was a modern pattern and the pattern claimed it was for Barbie.  So I modified that and went on my way, though I haven't tried any of their shirt patterns yet.  For the shirts I ended up following a tutorial on YouTube.  I don't have a tutorial for you in this post, but check back later and I will get a tutorial up on making the shirts and pants.

I wasn't initially going to make career outfits, but I got tired of wasting good fabric on botched attempts at using the Joanne's pants pattern so I cut up an old teal shirt (and that attempt went right), so from there I made a shirt and Barbie had an ER doctor's outfit.  My daughter loved it.

The next day I tackled a Barbie firefighter outfit.  I ended up making a hat for her too.  I will get a tutorial on hats up at some point so be on the look out.

The Fourth of July was just a day away and I had a scrap of flag fabric so out came 4th of July Barbie.  With her patriotic shirt and firework pants we decided that she was going to be Captain America's daughter.  My daughter loves the super hero dolls as much as she does Barbies.

And finally, it's summer and her Barbies had no casual summer shirts so I made this cute little shirt out of a scrap of fabric.  We dubbed her 'stay at home mom' Barbie because of the wild hair.  All of my fellow stay at home mom friends got a laugh out of it.

This is all I have for now.  My daughter is requesting I turn a Ken doll into a police officer and do another fire fighter uniform for a Ken doll so that firefighter Barbie can have a partner to go to work with.  I also plan on making aviator Barbie and Engineer Barbie.  Keep on the look out for clothing tutorials here in the future.

Finished Barbie House

Got the house put together and the wallpaper up in time for her birthday in October though it took me until now to get the pictures up.  Here they are.  For wallpaper I used scrapbooking paper and tape.  I picked up the scrapbook paper on sale at Michael's and Joanne's (mostly at Michaels) for about 20 cents a sheet.

Here's the construction of the house.  We got the shelving unit for $25 at Big Lots.  It's a single unit and those two pieces are meant to go on top of each other.  That presented a problem because we wanted it to be 2 pieces, so we took an old blond shelf we had laying around and drilled holes and screwed it to the bottom of the half without a bottom shelf.  Worked great and gave that taller shelf real stability.  If you go the shelving unit route, make sure it's tall enough for Barbie's to sand up in with some clearance.  I didn't have a tape measure with me in the store, but they also sold Barbies so I ran over and grabbed one from the Barbie isle and measured it against the display shelf they had set up.  It was a good fit and gave Barbie some clearance overhead too inside each shelf room.

Here's Barbie's outer downstairs deck and yard, though she uses the deck to park her Barbie Jeep most of the time.

 

Barbie also has an upstairs deck as seen in the full picture of the completed house.  Unfortunately you can also see our messy craft room.

Here's the downstairs of the taller portion which has the kitchen and living room.

Kitchen with our hand made fridge (tutorial still comming on that one):

And the sparse living room. No couch as of yet.

Second level of the taller portion.  Adult bedroom with our homemade furniture and bedding.

Third story of the taller portion.  Girl's room.  I call it the 'cherry' room because of the colors and how bright and fun it is.  Most of the furniture in here is home made.

Downstairs of the smaller portion which is a laundry room/misc whatever she makes it room.

Upstairs of the smaller portion which is the bathroom and boy's room with home made furniture.  I really love how that bed turned out.

Maybe I'm crazy but I love this paper.

And finally, here it is in her room on her birthday with other toys already trying to crowd it out.  It was well worth making this for her though, she plays with it almost every day, though recently her 12 inch spiderman doll has taken up residence there and she's turned the rest of her Barbies into 'the Avenger's who now live there also. That's ok, it's versatile  :)  As for storage, that footstool looking thing on the left has a lid that lifts off and holds the rest of her misc Barbies, their clothes and other bedding and accessories so we keep the Barbie house pretty clean, and when she plays with the house, she sits on the stool.

Tutorial: How To Make A Barbie Daybed, Bench, Kid Bed With Drawers

How To Make A Barbie Daybed

How To Make A Barbie Kid Bed

How To Make A Barbie Bench

(With Drawers That Open)

This one is one of my crowning achievements in our attempt to build Barbie furniture for the dollhouse we're building for our daughter's fifth birthday.  This one piece of furniture serves as three and is also functional as Barbie storage for all those little Barbie accessories or clothes.  Plus it's just pretty to look at.  The best part?  The total cost was $2 for the wood plus 2 cans of spray paint.  Everything else I already had.

So here's the tutorial: 

I know the tutorial was brief, but I like it that way.  Let me know if you had any questions about it in a comment below and I'll do my best to get back to you in a comment.  For a more detailed description about how to make the mattress top, blankets and pillow, see our Queen Size Bed Tutorial.

Barbie Bean Bag Chair

Tutorial: How To Make A Barbie Bean Bag Chair

I wanted to share with you how I made a bean bag chair for the kid size barbies.  I plan on making another one in girl colors for my daughter's doll house.  This is the one I made:

It takes 5 small pieces of fabric so I chose 2 green and 3 brown and filled it with rice and it came out great!  Plus I love the smell of rice.  I used a funnel to put the rice in.  I used the tutorial below to make this by MyFroggyStuff.  It took me about five minutes from start to finish, but if you're hand sewing it will take a bit longer.

Update on using rice: If you use rice, be absolutely SURE you sew up all the seams.  My 5 year old found the tiniest of holes in the bean bag chair, stuck her finger inside to see what was in there, and proceeded to work the hole bigger and bigger until there was rice from one end of the house to the other... I was picking up grains of rice for days.  Instead I would suggest dry beans (though this is a choking hazard for small children so don't use if your kids might put it in their mouths), and be sure to sew it up good and tight!  Double check!!

Have you made a Barbie or doll bean bag chair with this tutorial?  We'd love to see it!  Share a link of your picture in a comment below!