My wardrobe is the opposite of my dolls’. I have a lot of separates (shirts, pants, skirts, sweaters) while they have a lot more dresses than I will probably ever have (if only for lack of closet space). In my need for more separates to go with the small amounts of tops that I have for my dolls, I decided to sew a simple skirt that is very much modelled after a skirt that I have.

You will need:

• fabric – 8cm x 23cm
• trim (optional) – 23cm
• elastic – 3mm width, 9cm length (I got mine for $1.70 for 3.7m)
• scissors
• pins
• stabilizer
• safety pin (for threading elastic)
• thread
• iron
• sewing machine

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There is a lot to be said for bought doll clothing. It’s generally fast, you don’t need to know how to sew or buy your own supplies. Let’s face it: the cost of various colours of thread, different types of fabric and then some kind of fabric to line it so that the darker colours won’t stain your doll? It takes money to make those clothes, but also energy and time. I’ve talked a lot in the past about where to find fabrics or small prints, but when it comes down to the nitty gritty, unless we’re all ready to dabble in pattern design – we need to know where to go to find size-appropriate designs for our Blythes.

One great website is PuchiCollective.com, a lot of people recommend this site for newbies because it has a lot of sewing patterns (many adapted from old Skipper patterns) along with some great tutorials on changing eye-chips, how to do the lock-loop method for rerooting dolly hair and tutorials on how to take scalps off of the doll’s head.

Some other great sites to check out are:

• Orriettacat’s sewing patterns
• xoxo, Blythe
• Simplicity #2353 (not free, but a good resource if you can find it on sale!)

For non-sewing patterns, but these patterns will still aid you in expanding your doll’s wardrobe, check out:

• knitty.com – knitting patterns
• Shershegirl – knitting pattern (plain onesie)
• Shershegirl – knitting pattern (poofy pantie onesie)
• Stitch Journal – knitting patterns (links on side menu)

Dress made with the Blythe Empire Dress pattern from puchicollective.com

When in doubt, you can always do a quick search on Google for “free Blythe patterns” or “free Skipper patterns” (or another similarly sized doll). There’s a lot of resources that are available online, you can also find sewing tutorials (for machine and hand sewing). There are a lot of Japanese books available (although not inexpensive at all factoring in cost of the item and shipping!) like Dolly Dolly or similar books (these generally have patterns for Blythe as well as other dolls that are popular in Japan).

Please remember to read the terms and conditions outlined on each individual pattern. Many of them are free for personal use only (not for commercial use) and be sure to respect the wishes of the designers.

This week is a simple little DIY project for you: making Christmas (or any other holiday) cards for your dolls!

What you’ll need is:

• Cardstock or paper in any colour – you can most certainly use scrap pieces and I encourage it!
• Pens – thin ones in multiple colours
• Little holiday-stickers
• White-out/correction pens
• Scissors
• Ruler (optional!)

So I found these scrap pieces of coloured paper that were mostly square to begin with, I’m going to pretend that they are. I folded over the edge until I had a size of a card that I liked (one half of the card is 1.5″ x 1″ – so unfolded the card is 3″ x 1″). You can cut out as many or as little of these as you liked – I decided to cut out 7 of these so I would have 1 card per doll.

I like to use my ruler to make sure I get a really good crease on the fold so it doesn’t look like a wimpy fold (is there such thing as a wimpy fold?). Once you’ve got a good fold into the cardstock, you can go ahead and decorate the front however you want.

You can choose to write something on the inside (or not), it’s entirely up to you. Depending on if you like to decorate for  your dolls so they can celebrate the holidays as well, you could put up a string and hang a bunch of the cards up, like so:

Isn’t that pretty nifty?

If you decide to make some holiday cards for your dolls, be sure to share them here!

Costumes are fun and it’s so much easier to buy enough fabric to come up with a costume for a doll than it is for yourself. But what is your Blythe going to go as this year? I’ve come up with a list of ideas of costumes that should be relatively inexpensive and easy to do, since you do only have 11 more days to figure out costumes for your dolls!

1. Ghost – use tissue paper or a paper towel, drape accordingly and cut out holes for eyes.
2. Robot – use tin foil to make a dress/outfit, remember to include a tin foil hat.
3. Witch – use a plain black dress already owned, pair with a black construction paper witch’s hat.
4. Card Guard (from Alice In Wonderland) – use two playing cards, tape the edges together.
5. Alien – use green cellophane and wrap it around, be sure to use green pipe cleaner to fashion a headband with antennae.
6. Ancient Roman – use a scrap piece of white fabric to twist and drape into a toga, use a brown pipe cleaner to make a ring to fit on top of your doll’s head, tape/glue on small leaves (real, fake, paper leaves).
7. Black Cat – dress in all black, use a curved pipe cleaner wrapped around the waist as a tail, cut out black triangles from construction paper, attach to a headband.
8. Vampire – use little white triangle points a teeth, wear a black cape and carry around a Re-Ment goblet (with fake blood inside!)
9. Zombie – wear ripped and dirt-stained clothing, drool a little bit, have unkempt hair.
10. Another Stock Blythe – steal someone’s clothing, carry your Blythe around in the stock box of the clothing’s original owner.