You don't have to buy dresses for your Barbies doll. Make the dresses yourself.

When I was young I was involved with 4-H. Our 4-H group was very active in the community and also encouraged the individual members to become involved in project areas that they were interested in. There were many different project areas including farm animals, photography, gardening, cooking, sewing, woodworking environmental concerns and many other areas. I was interested in many areas. My mother always had us involved in the garden so I signed up for the garden project. I also loved cooking so I also signed up for the cooking units. I also signed up for sewing.

My mother was concerned that I was trying to learn too many things at one time. She encouraged me to start in beginner levels for each of the projects so that I would learn each area well. The sewing project for the beginners was to sew an apron. I thought this was stupid because I was not interested in wearing an apron. One of the more advanced projects was to make Barbie doll clothes and dress Barbies up. I was very excited about this project because I had seen many great patterns for Barbie doll clothes and I wanted to make them for myself and my friends to play with. I was only ten years old at the time.

My mother tried to change my mind, but I was very set that this is what I wanted to make. My mother pointed out that the small seams and patterns would be very difficult to sew well. I still insisted that I would be able to make the Barbie doll clothes and that it would be inexpensive because I did not need very much fabric to make the small items. My mother let me have my way, I think she knew that I was about to learn a lesson.



I traced the small tissue patterns for the Barbie doll clothes on to the fabric. I then cut out the small detailed pieces. The pieces were so small that it was impossible to pin the pieces together. At ten years old I did not have the skill to sew without pinning the pieces together, so this meant that I needed to hand baste the pieces. I wanted to just hand sew the Barbie doll clothes and dress barbies up, but my mother pointed out that this would disqualify the project because the guidelines stated that seventy percent of the project needed to be completed on a sewing machine. The remaining thirty percent could be hand sewing on the details such as buttons, lace, ribbons and other embellishments.

After several attempts and failures I decided that I would sew an apron for my project. My mother did surprise me by sewing the Barbie doll clothes as a gift for me for my birthday and dress Barbies up neat and clean. She had done wonderful detailing and the clothes were beautiful.