The pattern included scrubs for both Ken and Barbie. Ken had green scrubs and Barbie had pink. The hell with that. Barbie doesn’t have to be a nurse. Everyone on ER wears blue. Besides, blue was what I had. This was a McCall pattern. Making that pocket was tricky. It’s just so tiny! Then came an even thornier problem: getting the elastic through the waistband. I know the principal of threading elastic. You scootch it through with a safety pin. But where to find a safety pin small enough to go through a 1/4″ tunnel? I must have spent an hour trying to thread that elastic.

I love this fabric but not this dress. This was a Simplicity pattern and they tend to use shortcuts. In this case, gathers instead of pleats. It makes for a bunchy waistline that doesn’t drape well. I have a very similar pattern from Vogue with pleats that came out much nicer when I made it.

The coat has very short sleeves. That’s because the pattern fooled me (for the second time – more fool me). It says 5/8″ seam allowances unless otherwise noted. I was so excited about it too. I don’t care how small Barbie is, working with 1/4″ seam allowances is tricky on your own fingers, especially with any kind of fabric that wants to unravel. But on the next page it says 1/4″ seam allowances unless otherwise noted.

So I had done the first few steps which joined the back to the sides (and clipped the seams, of course) when I got to the collar and realized that if I took 5/8″ off of each side it was going to meet in the middle. That’s when I found the second note. It didn’t seem to make a whole lot of difference in the fit except that the sleeves came out so short, which is odd because I hadn’t hemmed the sleeves yet. Now I’ve crossed out the 5/8″ note and circled the 1/4″ note so that it doesn’t fool me the third time I use a pattern from this envelope.

This was from the Vogue envelope. Vogue doesn’t take shortcuts with Barbie. She gets linings and darts and pleats and pretty much everything you’d expect from a real pattern except set in sleeves (and 5/8″ seam allowances).

Her belt/waistband is actually a piece of ribbon. That’s a pretty common solution to the problem of how to make what would be skinny pieces even for humans. It’s not always easy finding 1/4″ or smaller ribbon to match whatever project you’re working on though. I think this dress is lovely. I believe it was from one of the Simplicity envelopes.