As an enthusiastic grandmother, with a granddaughter finally old enough to play with dolls...I reached out into the world of internet research and found the perfect doll. Unlike the American Girl dolls which my own girls played with, this 18"doll is jointed which means her knees bend. In my enthusiasm, I bought one on ebay and 4 on Amazon and anxiously awaited their arrival. In the meantime I went looking for doll patterns. There are some great ones at
WWW.LIBERTYJANEPATTERNS.COM .The dolls I chose were BFC INK dolls - which I find out are now discontinued. UGG.
Even knowing that fact, doesn't deminish their unique beauty and poseability. In my continued research I found out there is this world of imported ball jointed dolls which are beautiful and expensive and not exactly something a 3 year old plays with. The fashions, exchangable eyes, wigs and hands are amazing. Take a look at the outfits that Martha Boers creates for these dolls made by
Iplehouse at
Antique Lilac.
Given my husband has argued that these dolls are really for me. (He's right), I couldn't dissapoint him and so they are now in need of a wardrobe for some kind of fanciful play. But first I needed a
sloper. I couldn't find one in google search for this particular doll although there are lots for the American Girl Doll and others. So here is a detailed explanation of how to make a paper bodice pattern with a dropped waist.
Wrap a paper towel around your doll and using small strips of packing tape, tightly wrap your dolls waist. Then continue wrapping tape as tight as you can covering her body.
Continue adding paper toweling over shoulders and continue taping as tight as possible.
When you have taped the toweling over the body, double check to make sure it is as tight as possible everywhere.
Using a fine tipped marker, draw the edge of shoulders, front and back princess lines, sides and bottom length. Cut up the back with scissors and cut along the line for the shoulder seam.
Cut apart the paper-taped pattern along the princess lines and tape onto cardstock
Add 1/8th" seam allowances to your patterns and be sure to mark each piece with it's proper body location. CB=center back, SB= Side back, etc. Cut out pattern.
Using the pattern you have just created, cut out the pattern pieces in fabric and sew them together.
Because fabric has more stretch than cardstock, the center front and center back needed to be taken in an additional 1/8" to get a really good fit. If you make any changes to the fabric fit be sure to mark them on your cardstock pattern.
Now I am ready to make my dolls into princesses? no I think maybe fairies.
So, here is Yoko, one of my BFC dolls. She is modeling her groovy new sweater complements of the KdysCreations pattern on Etsy. The knitting instructions were easy enough to follow and the outcome is really cute. I used left over sock yarn so Yoko has a sweater that matches my socks.
The pants Yoko is wearing is a jean pattern I found at the LibertyJane Pattern Store. The only trick with these pants is to make sure you print the actual pattern pages out correctly. The one inch key on each pattern page came out to 1-1/8" when I printed with my Epson printer. I had to go into the advance printing tab and reduce the page size by 85% to get an actual inch. Also, they came out short. If I make these again I will add 1/2". Yoko's pants in the picture have not hem.
