DGS Quilt-Layer Cake Pop

I had my doGood Stitches group make these Layer Cake Pop blocks in bright colors last fall. Once I had all the blocks, I played with the layout a little bit. First in a random arrangement.

Then I thought, since I had about every color of the rainbow, lets try a diagonal rainbow order layout. Well, mostly rainbow order. The red, pink and orange are out of sorts a bit, but with the number of blocks I had of each, it made sense to arrange them this way.

Yep, that was the way to do it!

I custom quilted the stars and filled in the white background with lots of swirls,flowers, and other random things.

I marked the large colored squares diagonally with a chalk pencil. That was the only marking I did. The other star part I used the seam lines to guide.

I used up some leftover binding pieces and arranged them so that they kind of went alongside with the colors in the quilt. Another job well done Nurture circle ladies!

I had to get that quilt done and outta here because my turn was up again for March blocks. I decided to do another version of the Split 9-patch block, this time with cheery red, yellow, and bright colors. Color coordinated and scrappy. My favorite! My tutorial link for this block is in the tab at the top of the blog. My old Haven circle made the first version in black, blue, gray, and lights. I loved how it turned out! 

Lindsey's tractor baby quilt

Lindsey made this sweet little John Deere themed baby quilt.

I quilted a feathered paisley design to go along with the bandanna fabrics. And since there was both pink and blue, I needed something that would be gender neutral.

I bound it for her as well with the yellow fabric she included. Perfect color choice!

The back was a gray minky. So soft and cuddly! Thanks Lindsay!

More baby quilts from Jessica

More baby quilts from Jessica! This Fancy Fox quilt is one of Elizabeth Hartman's adorable animal patterns.

I quilted an all-over deisgn with a grassy-feathered swirl. Or I would call it a fuzzy fur-swirl in this instance.

The back.

And another charm pack baby quilt with adorable sky-themed fabrics.

All-over swirly clouds for this one.

And another Lilly Pulitzer fabric baby quilt. She makes a lot of these! I'm not sure if she ever gets tired of sewing these, but I can say that I don't get tired of quilting them.

I can see how they are so popular with such fun bright prints. This time I did feathered paisleys all over in a white thread.

Thanks for all the fun little quilts Jessica!

Jessica's LRRH and Lilly baby quilts

Jessica made a few baby quilts. The first being this one made with 5 inch charm packs with adorable Little Red Riding Hood prints. 

I quilted swirls and double bubbles all over in a light gray thread.

Love a solid backing!

Here's another of her Lilly Pulitzer baby quilts.

These bright prints are so fun!

I quilted all-over feathered swirls and paisleys with white thread.

The back.

A little closer look at those fun fabrics.

Thanks Jessica! She sells these quilts on her Etsy shop if you want to have a look-see. 

Barbie Clothes- Belle Dress, Summer Top

The striped top is a free pattern from Chelly Wood's Summer Wardrobe. Her website has tons of free patterns for dolls of all shapes and sizes. This top consisted of 6 pieces and 8 shaping darts! Holy smokes! It was a bit of work, but it does make for a really nice fitted top, and no raw edges to finish.

The Belle ball gown was made using this tutorial. I added a little white flower button at the top and some shimmery cream wired ribbon for the bottom. I gathered and stitched it to the skirt in a few places to make it extra fancy.

Well, this sums up my adventure making Barbie clothes. I hope you are inspired to try to make some of your own for the Barbie players in your life. I don't think I even got all the clothes I made photographed!

As you can tell, I had a lot of fun using fun themed small prints, old socks, ribbons, bows, buttons and elastics. There was lots of velcro and krazy glue, and thread color changes too. Who knows, maybe the fever will strike again sometime. They would make a good gift for a little friend.

Here are links to all of the tutorials I used. 

ChellyWood

Craftiness is not Optional

(scroll halfway down)

Janel Was Here

Minivan Dreams- Ball Gown

Sew Spoiled- Mermaid Tail

Repurposed Barbie clothes, Halter dress and Ball Gown

These two Barbies are modeling their Christmas dresses. These were made with an old pair of girls leggings and some glittery wired ribbon. I got a little creative with the ribbon and made one a one-shoulder strap. I should note that I melted all my ribbon edges with a lighter so that they will not fray and unravel. 

Old baby socks make super easy clothes! I'm sure you might have some missing mates in a drawer somewhere, and this is the perfect place to use them. Just cut the bottom off and you have a tube top. Cut a couple little holes in the sides for the arms and you have a tank top or little cap sleeves. Add a little gathered ruffle to the bottom and you have a dress. And since they are so stretchy, they will fit anybody types- curvy and "regular". You can learn all about the specifics on the different body types and mold versions with a bit of research. Janel has a little bit here as well as ChellyWood.com. 

Elsa is dressed up so fancy in her ball gown. This was a pattern I used from Julia's Ball Gown tutorial. I used a piece of shimmery home dec fabric from the remnant bin at Joann's. It was a bit of a pain to work with. I zig-zagged the edges of all the pattern pieces and the fabric unraveled so easily, by the time I had edged all the pieces, they were a good 1/4 to 1/2 inch smaller than they had started! So by the end of it all, the dress fits Elsa's tiny body and that's about it! lol. 

Janel's halter dress pattern is just great. These two halter dresses turned out super cute too! The Halloween dress turned out a bit small in the back, so I added a 1/2 inch to the two side pieces of the skirt in the hot pink version. We don't need to see your bum Miss sharpie face! There are a few other patterns from Janel that would be fun to try too. 

But it works just perfect for Princess Anna. She is a pretty petite sized doll, along with her sister Elsa. Pink dolphin is so silly with his work boots on! I attempted to create some sort of top out of a leftover sock bottom. It's a bit goofy fitting for a doll, but ok for dolphins. :)

My daughter had these leggings that were her favorite. "Kitty pants" were worn out to the max! So they became new again as a barbie dress. But please turn your garment inside out before fitting to your doll, not right side out like I have pictured. It's much easier that way! But it really is just as simple as pinning down the back to fit and stitching alongside your pins to the length you want. Then trim the excess away and you have a simple little dress. I added a broken hair tie for the halter strap and some matching ribbon to the bottom. I really enjoyed re-purposing all the little bits of ribbons and bows, pretty stretchy elastics, and fun fabric prints, and fancy textured fabric scraps.

I hope you are enjoying these posts on making Barbie clothes, because there is one more!

Barbie Dresses

My daughter was really into Halloween this past year. So I had to make a fun Halloween dress and a witch hat! The hat I made up myself using a bit of black wool. The dress pattern that I used quite a few times was from Craftiness is not Optional. It was so simple and versatile! 

Here's another version in red satin. My red scrap was only a couple inches wide, so I added a strip of shimmery wired ribbon to the bottom. So fancy! And next to her is another skirt/top combo. See the previous post for more of those.

(Gretta likes to color their faces with inkpen or sharpie marker. I've tried to get it off with various methods, but clearly it only goes so far. sigh. So, it's going to be only second hand Barbies for this girl for a while...)

The orange flowered dress was another favorite that turned out so cute! The scale of the print was perfect. Pink fuzzy mermaid was another easy one to sew up. I used Sew Spoiled's free tutorial.  I didn't even bother to hem the top since it won't fray anyway. I have made a few more of these with swimsuit fabric too. But why not a fuzzy mermaid out of a scrap of minky too?? There can be Arctic mermaids, right? 

And this blue dress might be my favorite. I had to make two of just about everything, because one was going to be a gift, so we needed another to keep. We kept the one that I used black thread to top stitch. What was I thinking? The white thread version-the better option- was the more gift-worthy one. The fuzzy, sparkly red bows actually fell off of a pair of my daughter's Hello Kitty socks. They worked perfectly for this dress! 

One more Barbie clothes post coming next- which includes clothes made from baby socks, and more dresses.