Barbie-mania

Oh, yeah, Barbies! I'm a big fan of Barbie dolls. I probably started sewing and creating because of their beautiful, pink, plastic, shiny, wonderful world. I used to look for everything connected with Barbie world when I was a child because everything was just so attractive. But it was also slightly unreachable. Slovenia was a small post-communist and socialist country in my childhood, a part of Yugoslavia (YU consisted of 6 smaller republics (Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Montenegro) and 2 (less-independent) states: Kosovo and Vojvodina). 

Everything nice was coming from Germany, Austria, Italy, also Czech Republic and Slovakia and Hungary. Everything what was precious and valuable was in German marks and it was quite expensive. So we used one currency to buy and sell in our country and German currency to save money in and to buy more expensive goods like cars, kitchen appliences and Barbies, yes, Barbies.  My mum bought some for me when she was able to travel abroad as part of excursions for teachers. They were probably from China but at that time even those toys were of relatively good value. I didn't have any original Barbies - in my memory they were so expensive, like 99 marks = 99 euros. 

I remember looking through a catalogue of toys which was in German. I could never get those pink houses, cars, closest, scooters, beautiful sparkly clothes etc. So I created my own from boxes, fabric and so on. Things were not pink but I was able to play and to create. I took good care of any Barbie clothes that I owned and copied them to re-creat my own clothes for Barbies. (I should show them once before my children totally destroy everything.)

Anyway, enough of memories and nostalgia. I'm getting old. 

Here are 3 Barbie dresses and two patterns I've made recently (The first one and the third one are made after the same pattern, the second one is a different pattern.) Here I'll show just pictures and I'll try and make PDF files to download for my next post.

#1: The Blue Sparkly dress

#2: The Pink Cotton dress

The process of making:

Here is the original file I found on the internet, but it's a .jpg file, so not very useful: Simplicity 4719

 https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1zNJn0I7Mn7pZc4Z1mNKTYUHMLuao-khv?usp=sharing

(I hope I'll publish it in PDF soon.)

#3: The Pink Boucle and Satin dress - the latest one

(This Barbie is like my best one that I own and she is over 30 years old.)

Useful site for making Barbie clothes:

A lot of great Barbie clothes with PDF patterns

Making a doll

I was asked to make a doll for our school children (4th grade) beacuse they are reading a book by Alf Projsen and they exchange this doll with another school. In Slovene we call her čajna ženička = the tea lady - (Teskjekjerringa in the original). Anyway, I like a good sewing challenge. 

My inspiration was: (pictures from the book) 

                               

My creation was this:

Purely by chance I came across a doll in Burdastyle magazine 9/2012 

and immediately I decided to use the pattern and just change it slightly.

The process of making - in pictures:

  

  

 So, that's it. I'm to lazy to write a very detailed tutorial. I hope pictures show the process.

New clothes for Anika

Anika has been lying around naked for some time. It wasn't a pretty sight even though she is just a doll. An opportunity to make her new clothes showed up when I had to shorten and hem my husband's pyjamas. The piece was perfect for a gathered doll's skirt. It was hemmed, so I just had to put in an elastic band.

For the top I used a pattern from Burda , She's a 35 cm high doll.

Anika is a nice reminder of the old times. My mum bought it when I was a young girl, so she is probably over 25 years old. Now I let my daughter play with her. At that time I think Slovenia was still a part of Yugoslavia and nice things were bought abroad, in Austria, Italy, Hungary and Czech Republic. If I remember correctly Anika came from Czech Republic, even though she was made in China.

I would love to make more doll's clothes (and Barbie clothes). That's why I started sewing as a little girl. However, it drives me crazy sewing them on sewing machine because they are so tiny. It's a lot easier to do this by hand. But that's something I just hate nowadays. Sounds like a vicious circle of want and hate at the same time. Anyway, there's another piece waiting to become, hmm, let's say, a dress?