I had been designing doll clothing and cloth dolls for years, when my husband and I started publishing doll patterns. My husband is an electrical engineer and natural problem solver. He observed how much time I spent carefully cutting out each doll. He noted that I sometimes ruined a carefully constructed doll when I made a mistake on the face. We had tried several solutions to these two problems that worked fairly well, when my husband discovered Spoonflower. Anyone can upload a design to Spoonflower and have it printed on a fabric chosen from the Spoonflower fabric selection. I found it was much faster to make a doll when the pattern has been printed on a Spoonflower fat quarter. The printed faces were wonderfully reliable. We had such a positive experience with the printed patterns, that we decided to make the printed fabric pattern available to the public. When someone buys fabric printed with one of our patterns, we are compensated a small percentage of the sale. We usually take the credit toward a fabric purchase. We don’t make much profit from the fabric sales. We made them available as an extra feature for people who enjoy our patterns.

At first we put out a fat quarter with a trio of dolls patterns and a selection of faces and a work area for the arm and leg templates. We filled extra space on the fat quarter with some shoe patterns, a picture of the completed doll and templates for the arms and legs. Later we put out a fat quarter with a quintet of dolls by limiting the choices of faces and omitting the extras.

The dolls are the same on the two fat quarters and require instructions for my book Sewing for Mini Dolls. Pattern on my Etsy shop.

At this season some doll makers find themselves making multiple dolls for craft shows and charity give-a-ways. We find that some crafters are purchasing whole yards of the quintet on Spoonflower. They are apparently planning on sewing up not just a trio or a quintet but a whole chorus of dolls! For those ambitious sewers we got the idea of providing a PDF file with a whole page of templates so that they can easily print extra copies of the arm and leg templates on printable freezer paper. The freezer paper method should be used to apply the templates. This method is described as an option in the pattern instructions. For your sewing pleasure, the TwinkleTemplates is here for a free download. Be sure to select print full size when you print the templates and check the ruler printed with the templates before using them.

Printable freezer paper is available at sewing and craft stores and on Amazon.

Christmas Sewing, my patterns, Uncategorized Making Six and One Half Inch Dolls

There is still time to make a mini doll wardrobe before Christmas. I just recently spent all the spare time I had for a week making wardrobes for two mini dolls. The two dolls and their clothing are for a church toy drive. I used two fat quarters, two felt squares, and some scraps of knit and flannel that I had on hand. I also used two pairs of baby socks for the little sweaters. I purposely gave myself gave myself a week that was also filled with other commitments to make the doll clothes. I wanted to prove that there is time in a busy week to make a mini doll wardrobe. Here is a picture of one of the dolls and her wardrobe. Remember I made the same number of clothes for a second doll.

You can have almost all the patterns it takes to make the wardrobe free for a short time. My last three blogs have patterns for the jumper, vest, sweater, leggings, and tights. The summer top is a free pattern on my pattern page. Click on Small Doll Patterns in the directory at the top of the page, and it will take you to the free sundress and summer top pattern.

I am offering my down-loadable pattern: “Gown, Smock Top, and Two Tiered Skirt” free until December 15. If you would like this free PDF, please email me at sherralyn@sherralynsdolls.com  and ask for it. I’d love to send you a copy.

Unfortunately. I don’t have a finished pattern for the little robe. It’s still only a draft on graph paper.

The shoes are in my book Sewing for Mini Dolls and in the Mini Doll Shoe Cut and Sew kit. I hope that you have fun doing Christmas sewing this month.

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I receive a lot of pleasure from doll pattern making. One nice surprise has been the e-mail friends that I have made over the years. One lovely lady that I am corresponding with has a personal doll ministry. She buys, dresses, and makes dolls all year to give to various charities serving children.

She has been frustrated lately while trying to come up with a pattern for a group of cherubic baby bath dolls that she wants to dress. When I agreed to try to adapt some of my patterns to fit the doll, she generously sent me a doll to work with. I have a much easier time altering patterns, if I have the doll in front of me. Of course the doll will be donated to a Christmas toy drive.

As soon as I started working with this doll, I realized a problem with the way dolls are sized. On Amazon this doll is described as an 8 inch doll. I measured her as a 9 inch doll.

The variation in height is not only problem with trying to select a pattern to alter to fit this doll. Compare the bath doll with my 7½ inch Florabunda.

The two dolls may be close to the same height, but the difference in width makes them very different sizes.

I decided to look at an easy pattern for an eighteen inch doll. The Summer Top pattern from my book Learn to Sew for Your Doll,  is an easy pattern and about the right length for a dress for my bath doll.

Compare the Summer Top  to the sundress pattern for Florabunda.

If the only factors to consider were height and width, I could choose between shrinking the width of the Summer Top or increasing the width of the smaller sundress. The arm opening of the large pattern is very different from the opening of the small one . If you compare the arm size of the bath doll to Florabunda’s arms, you can see that I need a larger arm opening for the bath doll. I decided to use the Summer Top pattern.

To determine how much to decrease the width, I measured the bath doll across the shoulders and measured 3.5 inches.

I decided to make my pattern about 6.5 inches wide. It will be gathered at the top to fit the doll’s 3.5 inch shoulders. Because my pattern is cut on the fold, I divided 6.5 in half to alter the pattern. 

For this simple dress the back will be cut from the same pattern. The entire front or back pattern looks like this:

Follow the directions for the sundress or summer top to use the new pattern.

In my next blog, I will discuss making a diaper cover using the shorts pattern from Learn to Sew for Your Doll.

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Tech support (husband with the help of younger son) has updated the main page of my website. I really like the new look and I hope that you will check it out. Click  the “Main” button at the top of the page or click here.

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We have been having problems with this website for the last week. I am not certain that the problem has been fixed. If you are able to read this today and later you are unable to reach the website, the site has not gone away. If the site is not on the web, it means that we are still having server problems. Also, I cannot get to my email. If you have tried to email me lately, please try again in a few days.  I hope that I will be able to post a proper blog again soon. –Sherralyn

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I hope that you will take a few minutes to check two more pages on my website. We have added descriptions of my two new books on “My Books” page. You can see color pictures of  Kitty, and Twinkle and pictures of several different dolls wearing clothes made from patterns in the books.

To get to my book page you can click the “My Books” button at the top of the page, the words “My Books” to the left of this column or click here.

Also be sure to check Florabunda’s Page. Tech support (husband) has just fixed a bug that had disabled the Easter Eggs on the page in some web browsers. Florabunda’s Page has lots of free kid friendly patterns and activities.

To get to  Florabunda’s Page you can click the “ Florabunda’s Page” button at the top of the page, the words “Florabunda’s Page” to the left of this column or click here.

My books, Uncategorized

My website was down for a few hours last night, while my web provider changed servers. It was a smooth transition and everything is back to normal.

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My blog was off line for a while yesterday. We had problems updating WordPress. Technical support (husband) woke me up at 11:30 last night to tell me he had fixed the problem.

Now that I can post again, I can tell you about our new feature.

Check out my pattern page. We have a pick three special. Choose any three patterns for seventeen (USA) dollars and save up to nine dollars.

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If anyone besides Delese has noticed, I only had one entry for my contest. At least I did not have to spend hours writing names on slips of paper for the drawing. Delese, thank you for entering. If you will contact me at sherralyn@sherralynsdolls.com to tell me the pattern that you have chosen, I will send a pdf file to your email address. I might try another contest in early October. If anyone is interested, make a comment or send me an email.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

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