Red dress for Chinese Lantern Festival

  It was Chinese Lantern Festival yesterday.  I was busy making a red dress for Barbie for a while, just finished right on time for this day. 

  It took me a while to pick out the fabric, I have some red fabric, but I wanted it a little shiny, finally I found a piece of satin I bought long time ago, it wasn't good quality fabric, but I like the color and I didn't want to buy any more, I have too much fabric. I just need to sew very carefully.

  I had some problem sewing it at the beginning, because it was small, and fabric was easy to get unraveled, then I tried to use some thin iron-on interfacing, it was much better.  I sewed the straps on the waist band backward on the back, it had a twist, I put the twist to the shoulder, and add a feature to it. Sometimes a mistake makes thing special.

  I would like to add some Chinese elements in the pictures, so I used a Chinese carving hanger as background, and Lantern Festival surely needed some lanterns. I have some red wood beads, perfect for lanterns. So that's it, Yeah...✌

Another wedding dress for Barbie

  After the first Barbie makeover, I got very busy. So I had to put it off, but still thought about it sometimes. In the mean time, I've been learning more techniques. Now I have some free time, I can make another one.

  I still want to make a mermaid wedding dress this time.  I drew out the pattern of the top and mermaid part, still can use the skirt part from the last one. I have some left over fabric from making a pillow case, it's ivory color with some dotted pattern, I have to match dots, but it's okay. I used little pearls and thread loops as closure this time, it's much neater. I don't know why the skirt is tighter this time, maybe because the fabric is thicker. Also Barbie's waist is too small, the dress has some wrinkles there, so I made a waist band with netting, sewed on flowers with rhinestones, and chain, at the back I made a big bow to cover up wrinkles. 

  I want to put Barbie's hair up this time. She has too much hair, so I braided it and put around on top. The bow has long tales, so I just made a short little veil. How do you like it?

  

First Barbie makeover

  A few years ago, my husband's grandma gave me some of her dolls, some barbies and two little girl dolls. I don't know if they can be consider vintage. I like dolls, I never had one when I was kid, so I was very happy to have them. They looked kind of old and hair all tangled up, even though, they meant something to me. I felt like to make them pretty again.

  So it started, I picked one barbie, washed her, bushed her hair and fixed it nicely. I have a friend who worked at an alteration store, she gave me a lot of scrap lace, netting and satin. I think I could make barbie a wedding dress. I drew out a pattern, this one I used lace at the top part, added some white beads, satin at skirt part, and netting pieces at mermaid part. Also made her a veil, earring and necklace.  she looked like this( I forgot to take a picture before.)

    

  It was the first barbie dress I ever made, I wasn't completely satisfied with it. I used snaps as closure, even they were little snaps, still didn't lay out well.

  I did this a few year ago, I posted it because I want to see how my skill improve later. I will learn it from here, will be better next time. I gave this dress to my neighbor's little girl as Christmas gift, she was so happy.