Chelsea Dress

I mentioned in the previous Stacie post that I was trying to use an old free Fibre Craft Cindy pattern, found here, to make a dress for Barbie's Chelsea Can Be Builder Doll . Clearly since I made a Stacie post out of my first attempt I had to make a second try to get it to fit .

I'd purchased a selection of size 20 thread from Creative Yarn Source last year for making Barbie clothes. It proved the right choice for making this outfit work for Chelsea. I needed my .4mm thread hook to get the size right for Chelsea. I also added two rows of purple prior to changing to yellow to give the dress the length it lacked likely from the smaller thread size and the smaller hook size. I chose not to use the collar or the buttons suggested for the Cindy doll. I tried the collar on the Stacie outfit and found it was too large. The Cindy doll has a slightly larger rounder head and the collar fits better on her.

I will be keeping this pattern for both Stacie and Chelsea. I have my notes on my blog and the printed copy of the pattern for both dolls so I should be able to find them again and repeat for future donation projects. I'm working on hunting down more easy to make Chelsea patterns as I did feel bad she left with only one dress last year.

Along with getting a dress made earlier in the donation cycle I'm also pleased to say I found some Mattel branded Barbie items specific to Chelsea at the Dollar Tree that will be headed out with the donation as well. I've had luck there for Barbie with shoes and other various Mattel specific accessories but this January was the first time I'd seen stuff targeted to Chelsea so I stocked up for this year and to have stuff for future donations in case this was a one time only situation.

Stacie Shirt and Pants

Last year I failed terribly to provide Chelsea, the smallest of the Barbie dolls, with much of a wardrobe. To correct that I decided to start the year focusing on patterns I thought might work for her. I had found a free pattern for the no longer available Fibre Cindy doll that used to come in the package with the doll here and never got around to trying it. While Cindy is clearly larger than Chelsea I thought the pattern could be adjusted. Why then a post about Stacie you might ask?

I forgot a lesson I learned last year while making Barbie clothes. Thankfully, I still have the tools I acquired last year even if I forgot about some of them. In this instance I trusted the directions that said to use size 10 crochet thread. Experience has taught me, which is why I have a bag of size 20 thread purchased from Creative Yarn Source. However, having started on this project it seemed a shame to waste it and with multiple sized dolls one almost always fits the outfit. In this case instead of a dress it made a nice top for Stacie.

Thankfully unlike Barbie and Ken I was able to get the same donation dolls to match the models I used last year for Skipper, Stacie, and Chelsea so no new additional dolls and I don't have to relearn sizes for these dolls. When I saw the size of the top I had a good idea that it would be a good fit for Stacie. For my own notes since I will likely come back to this pattern at some point in the future I used a .75mm thread hook with size 10 crochet thread for the top.

Now having a top I needed bottoms and I turned to a pattern I used last year for shorts from an out of print Annie's Fashion Doll Sister and Me 87D21. I used a 1.25mm hook for the shorts and then just continued with the leg rows until they were pant length. There is a snap in the back to close the pants. There is an additional finished row to the pants opening that I continued around the top of the pants to finish off the starting chain.

This works as a simple pants and top outfit or could also be pajamas depending on how the child wishes to play with the doll she gets from the donation.