Youtube Doll Shoe Tutorials and Me

 I rescue 12 inch dolls, and rescue dolls rarely have shoes.Youtube is full of tutorials on making shoes for Barbie and similar dolls, where the shoes look usable and not bad. I think I've seen each one at least once. There are doll shoe tutorials for making shoes from paper, foam sheets, polymer clay, puffy paint, and more. Most begin with tracing around the doll foot.

Foam sheets: A tutorial suggests gluing foam sheets and bits together with hot glue to make shoes.  I cut a foam circle bead into quarters, hot glued it to a foam shoe sole, and hot glued the toecap to the front of the shoe. It looked strange and the arch was too low for Little Miss Revlon, so I kept gluing bits to the foam quarter bead to make it higher. Technically this would work, if neatened. I'm underwhelmed. Foam paper makes an excellent toe cap, but it has to be stuck to the shoe with hot glue. There is a lot of potential for the Loving Hands At Home look when I use hot glue.

The puffy paint shoe technique requires a steady hand and a whole lot of patience. It stuck to the parchment paper wound around the doll's foot and refused to let go when I tried to make shoes for a high heeled doll. For a 3 1/2 inch Mattel doll whose legs are hard plastic, I globbed on the paint in several layers, allowed the shoes to dry, and yes, they did peel off. They are a hideous color and lumpy besides. If it weren't for the lumpiness, I might buy another color and try again. Shiny puffy soft globs on a doll foot don't add up to shoes. The tutorial was aimed at children.

Hot glue doll shoes: After taping up the dolls' feet, I did manage to make form-fitting soles that agreed to let loose of the doll. The tutorial suggested that I cut a wedge of glue  to use as a heel, from the left over dabs that land everywhere. And just to stick them into place with a warm glue gun. To me, the cut glue looks awful, but it does stick. Smoothing it with a warm glue gun is frustrating. I really think I should have cut off a bit of the stick and sawed it down the middle. 

Hot glue soles call for a lot of smoothing with a hot glue gun. If you aren't careful, you can undo all your good work. And of course there are glue strings. Lots of them.

The tutorial suggests I put leftover dabs onto parchment paper and press the lumps into a sheet busing a glue gun.If they are actually lumpy, you need an iron, and make sure you are using parchment paper. Wax paper will not turn loose. Ask me how I know.

Much as I dislike working with it, I can see that glue stick glue can be good. Hot glue makes it easier to stick the heel to the sole at the right angle. If I gather up all the drips and iron them between parchment sheets, I might get a nice even material to make soles with. But putting a pattern under the parchment and adding melted glue might do just as well. Either way, I will still have to shape it to the doll's foot with a hot glue gun. 

Drawing a pattern on parchment paper and drizzling hot glue over it results in a sole that looks a lot like the corded soles for espadrilles. This has potential for me.

My favorite shoe base is layers of cardboard moistened with white glue and tied to a doll's foot for shaping and drying. I can even the edges with a nail file. A bit of shiny wrapping paper makes a nice insole, and elastic makes a tolerable strap.

Sewing for Kenner 12 Inch dolls

What do Kenner 12 inch dolls of the 1980s wear? By the time they reach the secondary market, all the dolls are nude and needy.  Bionic Woman, Dusty and Skye, Princess Leia,  International Velvet, and Darci all can wear knitwear manufactured for Barbie, or they can wear Kenner clothing. The trick is finding it in good condition.

 

All the Kenner ladies are broader and sturdier-looking than Mattel's Barbie.Velvet has blue eyes and blonde hair. Princess Leia has brown eyes, brown hair and redder lips. They have the same head, which may be the soft vinyl version of the hard vinyl  Bionic Woman head. They share a body and legs with  Dusty and Skye (1974) a doll that has been called the ugliest fashion doll ever. She suffers from a bad factory haircut and face paint that has aged poorly, but she's not ugly.

Dusty and Skye outfits were sold separately and with athletic sets such as ball, bat and mitt, tennis racquet , gymnastics equipment and a horse. These gals had a great selection of clothing, and some of the styles could be worn by Bionic Woman even though her added height is mostly in her torso. Looking at illustrations from package backs, it seems that Bionic Woman and Dusty had the same clothing in different colors. Bionic Woman and Dusty can wear each other's shoes, but not Barbie shoes. Velvet and Leia  have the same flat feet as Dusty and Skye, still another Kenner offering of the 70s, and might have been able to wear Ken's sneakers.  

I sew for dolls. Eighties patterns for Barbie were designed with enough ease to make it simple for children to dress the dolls, so taller and wider dolls can wear clothes from Barbie patterns. Sometimes the patterns themselves list dolls the fashions  might  fit.

These are dolls of the mid to late 70s. Doll clothes patterns of that time ought to fit, and some patterns even suggest that they do fit. Simplicity 9194 (from 1979) even says it is for 12 1/2 inch dolls. The fashions have nothing in common with the ultra-slim-ultra fitted Barbie outfits of the 1960s, but they are appropriate for their time. By the 70's, shoulder pads and tailoring had given way to unlined jackets with minimal shaping. In doll scale, this is very easy to sew. I made my first shawl collar on a jacket from S9194, and I was nervous about it. Most of the clothing is tubes and elastic, making it just right for experimenting with the fancy stitches on your sewing machine.

Bionic Woman Jamie Sommers had her own ideas of proper attire. No binding clothing, she said. Nothing that will rip when she runs, leaps and brings down bad guys. Because the Kenner offerings were so minimal -- Jamie came in a white shirt and blue pants or a blue jumpsuit -- I wanted to start with something girly, something I'd seen Lindsay Wagner wear on the show. I settled on a peasant blouse and tiered skirt. It seems to me that the Jamie Sommers who lived in Ojai would be unbuttoned enough to wear peasant blouses and gathered tiered skirts. For one thing, this was the style of the Seventies. For another, these items are loose and comfortable.

Simplicity came to the rescue in 1981, with S5356. A peasant blouse and tiered skirt, running shorts and a raglan jacket with slacks seem aimed at Bionic Woman. The pattern says it is for dolls such as the 12 1/2 inch Darci and the 11 1/2 inch Barbie. 

Directions for tiered skirts are all over the internet for children and adults, and possibly for 18 inch American Girl types.  They were not in my vast collection of Barbie patterns. I added ease to the hip measurement and came up with 6 1/2 to 7 inches for the first tier. Most tiered skirts add 1/3 to the previous tier, so 6 1/2, 11, 17 should work. It did, but seems skimpy. Jamie Sommers prefers 7, 13, 20 inches. My tiers are 2 inches wide.

Simplicity 7210 from 1975 offers  the obligatory wedding dress plus 5 more outfits including a full length slinky dress and caftan, raglan sleeved top and jumper, long sleeved top and overalls, top and pants, nightgown and panties. Simplicity 7737 from 1976 mentions Dusty and Skye in the pattern information, as well as Ken, Curtis and G.I. Joe. Some outfits might have been copied from Dusty's  catalog: a jumpsuit and a shorts set in particular. You will have to use the boy's  jumpsuit pattern to get the correct width for  Bionic Woman, and lengthen it in the torso as well. Trace the pattern  and test it against the doll before even thinking of cutting fabric. The formal is a halter top long gown with a ruffle. Leia and International Velvet like it.

Simplicity's 9194 (copyright  1979) has several outfits with minimal shaping. A tube dress, a tube skirt, and shirt are basic and boring, but are also true to the era. There is a raglan sleeved wedding gown that can provide the basis for the longer and looser peasant blouse. Many of these are repeats from Simplicity 7210; The illustrations were different, but the clothes are essentially the same. The first time I made anything with a shawl collar was with this pattern. The sleeves are a little short for Bionic Woman, the torso is too wide for Barbie unless you sash it.

Patterns that are little more than rectangles and tubes are fast to sew. You can jazz things up with trim or machine embroidery. The Bionic Woman is less than pleased with a straight skirt, but  too bad. I had fun playing with stitching.

Because Bionic Woman doll is larger in the torso than most Mattel 12 inchers, I tried a pattern sold through newspapers for vintage Barbies. The killer suit with 3/4 length coat was enormous on Barbie and only a bit large on Bionic. The skirt that swallowed Barbie fits well, except that Bionic wants skirts that will allow her to run.

 Simplicity 8281, copyright 1977, has more star power and fashion sense, and seems geared for the active young woman. A front closing A-line skirt  opens should the Bionic Woman take off in a sprint after the bad guys. Culottes  and a matching vest  allow her to work undercover as an administrative assistant, but won't hold her back should she need to leap over tall buildings.  There is a raglan sleeve jacket, a flirty sundress. The glamorous 2 piece evening gown designed for Cher is something Jamie could move in. And the short flirty sundress resembles the longer evening g dress produced by Kenner.

Probably the best pattern for the bigger dolls (Cher, Farrah, Toni Tenille, Tuesday Taylor, Dorothy Hamill, Princess Leia) is Marie Osmond's Butterick Craft 224, issued in 1977-78, but still for sale during the 80s. The pattern also contains patterns for a 30 inch doll. I was less than thrilled with the pattern at the time I bought it, because I was gung-ho for vintage Barbie. For Kenner, Ideal and Mego 12 1/2 inch dolls, this pattern cannot be beat. I really appreciate Marie Osmond's precision. 

The Dorothy Hamill skating outfit of a bodysuit and circular skating skirt look very like the skating costumes of that era and fits the Dorothy Hamill doll beautifully. The pants for Toni Tenille fit Ideal's Tuesday Taylor, even though shown on Mattel's Marie Osmond doll. A schoolgirlish jumper and blouse for Princess Leia is too big on Barbie. A dolman sleeved tunic and long gown shown on the pattern front on a Farrah doll could make a good repro Princess Leia dress. 

Dolls that cannot share clothing with Barbie can be lots of fun to sew for.

High Heeled Shoes for Dolls

Today I am bending cardboard to the feet of lady dolls. Why? Because the white plastic generic shoes from doll catalogs looked fine when they arrived, but within months they had fallen into brittle pieces. I saved the pieces for many years. Who knows, glue and fabric and elastic may revive them. I have many shoeless dolls, probably because the darned plastic shoes break after 60 years. I cringe when I think of having thrown away broken doll shoes as a child. These days I regard a broken shoe as an opportunity to use the sole as a base for adding elastic and felt.

Paper, cardboard, white glue, a toothpick, and elastic are my main supplies. They are available everywhere, don't have noxious odors, and bond together in a manner similar to papier mache'. For good measure, after I get the shoe to the proper shape, I cover it with Mod Podge to waterseal it. Little Miss Revlon and friends are patient models. All they ask is that I moisturize the feet with hair conditioner and scrub well when I finally stop playing with paper and glue.

The elastic that comes in 1/4 and 1/8th inch widths will probably give you a look closest to what the lady dolls of the 1950s wore, but I've only found it in black and white. Because the fiber is polyester, the best you will get by dyeing is a pastel. The stuff currently sold as foldable elastic cord, ostensibly for making your own bras and panties,  is very lightweight and almost perfect when used as a single layer for dolls. It comes many colors and patterns and I lurve it madly right now.

 

I outline the doll's foot and try to mark the outline just where her foot bends. After cutting 3 or 4 of each sole, reversing the template, I bend the cardboard. A layer of white glue goes between the first two layers, which are shaped to the doll's arch with elastic bands or oodles of thread. It doesn't matter so much how you do it, as long as the damp cardboard is trained into an arch that matches the doll's arch. When you have 3 or 4 layers, even out the sides with scissors and then file them.

When you know for certain what color your shoe will be, you can paint the entire shoe, including the sides. If you have a light hand, spray paint works. Craft paint and nail polish work very well. Nail polish increases the strength of the shoe.

Decide whether your shoe liner will be paper or felt. Avoid black because the dye may transfer. A nice pink scrapbook paper is sturdy enough to hide where the elastic joins. Wrap the elastic around the doll's foot and mark where it overlaps. I've sewn the loops together, and glued them, and don't see that it makes much difference. I use hot glue for this stage because it cures quickly. Stick the wrap to the sole or to the bottom of the shoe liner. Let dry. Add the shoe liner after you have decided on the heel placement.

For the heel, I make a rolled paper bead around a toothpick. Mark a point about 1/4 inch from the heel edge. At this point I wiggle the point of a seam ripper until there is a small hole through which a straight pin can go. The point of the pin will hold the paper bead. Look carefully at the shoe from the side. Is the heel right for you? Do you need a shorter or taller heel? Will a cut off golf tee do? When you've made your heel decision, paint or color the bead and glue it to the shoe base with either white glue or hot glue -- depending on how neat you are.

 

I carefully measure the height of real LMR heels, cut a paper strip that wide by 5 inches long, and wind it in a paper bead roller from a kit by Creativity for Kids. I paid about $5 for this, whereas bead rollers from eBay can be pricey. Toothpicks work just as well if you don't mind getting glue all over your hands.You can  cut the heel at a slant. Good luck with this. I do better with a single layer of cardboard at the back of the heel. After the heel is glued to the sole, I check to make sure the doll can stand. Sometimes my measuring is off, sometimes the doll's legs no longer are even.

You can use almost anything for the heels: bits of wood carved to the correct height, beads glued together. You can make a wedge shape from Sculpey, bake it and use it as a shoe base. You can make an entire shoe base from Sculpey, if you can stand the way the stuff feels. I can't. It is tempting to glue the heels to the sole early in the process. Don't. Attach it with a straight pin until you are certain about heel position. 

Sometimes you need to fill in between the shoe top edges. Toilet paper is good for this.  You can cut and carve bits of dowel to use as heels. For larger dolls, a cut down golf tee is an acceptable heel. You can make a mold from another shoe and fill it with hot glue. When it is cool, pop it out of your mold and glue it on the shoe base. Or make the entire base and heel from hot glue.

I've done most of my shoemaking in Little Miss Revlon size because I always liked her best. Other ladies in sizes 17 inch through 25 inch have wandered through my life.  Admit to yourself that this is a craft project at which you will improve. It's fiddly work. Sometimes by sheer luck you create something wonderful on the first try. Sometimes you rip off the top multiple times. And sometimes the shoes wait until you want to photograph them to fall apart in your hands.  I had a lovely purple pair with heels made of stacked purple beads, attached with hot glue. And then I had two pieces of cardboard and felt, and a hand full of beads.

Coats for Little Miss Revlon and Friends

Why are so many of Little Miss Revlon's coats so full? Because her skirts are very very full. Yes, she is a fashion doll, and fashions of the mid-Fifties favored full skirts for women, but not all the time. Yes, she was meant to appeal to girls 5 and older, all of whom wore crinolines and petticoats with their best dresses, but not all the time. It bothers me that  LMR in her snazziest attire could not drive a car because her skirts would not fit behind the wheel. It bothers me that clothing for this wonderful doll emphasizes that she is a toy.

So I decided to test all the patterns I could find that were meant for Little Miss Revlon, and a few meant for later dolls. A couple of weeks later, the Yahoo group Little Miss Revlon and Friends announced a winter coat photo event. All we had to do was to photograph our little ladies in coats. I was off and running.

Left, Advance 8814 coat. Right,Frankencoat

Advance 8814 for Little Miss Revlon offers the styling  of fashion magazines for humans. The sailor dress is close to Ideal's version. Would the coat be less full than those from patterns Simplicity and McCall? Well, no. It is most definitely a swing coat. I made it up in unlined blue corduroy, and took tiny pleats in the back to tame some of the fullness between the shoulders. It fits almost exactly the same as Simplicity 2254's coat. McCall's 2162 (1957) is shown in fake fur on the pattern front. It is a lined raglan sleeved coat that probably looks a great deal like my blue corduroy Franken coat from  Top Fashions for Teenage Dolls. I couldn't bring myself to test it.

Version 1 is blocky

Version 2 moderately better

Top Fashions for Teenage Dolls (Hollis & Janitch) were designed for Tammy-like dolls, wider necked and thicker bodied than Barbie. There are several coat styles in the book and I thought they'd work for LMR. My favorite, a trench coat, was a disaster on a 10 1/2 inch doll. In general, the coat styles in this book are a single pattern piece for the coat and another for the collar. They seem too big on LMR and friends.  A swing coat with sleeves separate from the coat body might work, and it did. I fiddled with the pattern to make it narrower and achieved nothing more than a wide coat. Not what I was looking for, but acceptable, especially over a dress with a full skirt.

Almost. Too wide, but usable, with separate sleeves.

The LMR coat in Johanna Gast Anderton's Sewing for Twentieth Century Dolls is very full and wide with seemingly short arms. There's a reason for this. You want to accommodate any dress sleeves the doll may be wearing, as well as that dratted full skirt. It makes up nicely in whatever fabric you like. After testing the pattern in paper towels, I usually do a second test in felt to avoid having to make linings or facings. Try the coat on a dressed doll, and pin any excess. I usually pin out  darts between the back shoulders. In a lighter fabric, you can change the shape a lot by making several small open bottomed darts. After making a plain coat, I got out leaf colored felt and felt leaf shapes and had fun.

JGA pattern for LMR coat

When Barbie came along, my mother used Simplicity 2254 for LMR to make the coat. It worked, so I thought I could use Barbie patterns for LMR and friends.  Barbie has an ostrich neck, so collars that look fine on her may look awful on  Little Miss Revlon. Her arms are longer, so any coats with elbow length sleeves should work for LMR and friends? Years ago I made up Simplicity 4883 and Simplicity 4424 for Barbie. Would they work for LMR? Yes indeed. Were they what I wanted? Not by a long shot.

Janet Panecki, who knits and sews for many dolls, offered to share her own straight coat pattern, and I jumped at the offer. I made it in leopard print flannel the instant the mail arrived.This was IT, the silhouette I really truly want. It would go with slim skirted dresses, and dresses with flared skirts. Except I didn't actually HAVE any of those. I'd only made dolly dresses for LMR.

 

By this time. Little Miss Circle P, who does most of my in process modeling, was getting a bit punchy. "Slinky dress, leopard coat, time for fun," she said, hiking her dress up on one side.

Little Miss Revlon's friends include American Character's Toni, Vogue's Jan and Jill, Miss Nancy Ann, and lady dolls from 9 to 10 1/2 inches. These include but are not limited to Cissette, Suzette, Circle P and Circle X dolls.