Have you met the American Girl Doll of the Year yet? Her name is Isabelle and she loves dancing and sewing. Her American Girl doll collection includes a studio for her sewing. In that $275 studio is a sewing machine as well as a dress form. My daughter saved up for her own Isabelle doll, but as much as my daughter wants to sew with her, I don’t have $275 to spend on the studio for the Isabelle. Instead I had fun searching American Girl Doll patterns and found the perfect, simple pattern.
Aren’t they just darling? This was a super easy pattern to follow and to make. With such an adorable final project, what’s not to love? Nothing!
If you want to make your own dress form for your dolls, you will need the Liberty Jane Dress Form pattern. Liberty Jane has tons of cute American Girl Doll patterns, if you want to make something else. The pattern is $3.99 and is listed as an easy skill level. I totally agree with the easy skill level. The hardest part of the pattern was the pinning and the glueing of the wood bead at the top.
Supplies:
- Liberty Jane Dress Form Pattern
- Fabric (I was able to make 3 from the amount of fabric shown as needed in the pattern. I did have to cut extremely carefully to do so. You will still need the amount of fabric required so you have the correct width of fabric for your cuts)
- Polyfill
- 7″ Unfinished Wood Candle Holder
- 1 1/4″ Doll Head Wood Bead
- Hot Glue Gun
- Cardboard
- Felt to match your fabric
- Thread
- Gem embellishment (optional)
When you get to the step where you glue the form to the cardboard base, it can be a little challenging to get things to come out straight and not slightly lopsided. I found that if I was careful to pull the fabric the as close to the same amount as I could all the way around, my dress form came out even, not lopsided.
Make sure when you stuff your dress form, you stuff it really full. Then push the filling down and stuff some more. You don’t want to give the filling a chance to settle and end up with a saggy dress form. If you kids are like mine, they will play hard with these and filling to the point of almost overfilling will pay off in the long run.
I managed to find a fabric that had some of the same swirls as the dress from that comes in Isabelle’s studio from American Girl. That was important to my daughter, so I’m very glad I found something.
We tried another candlestick holder but liked the look and price of using these unfinished wood candlestick holders better. I just painted them black to match. I found a sheet of the gem stickers in the dollar bins at Michael’s and thought they were perfect to add a little bling to our dress forms.
Isabelle is so happy with her new dress form! It is just the perfect height for her to work at and she love the colors.
The first thing she did was try her new tutu on the dress from to make sure it would fit her.
My youngest daughter and I made the tutu for Snowflake and Isabelle for her birthday. Can you believe how close we got it to the AG tutu? I will have a tutorial on making the tutu another time.
It looks like the tutu is going to be a perfect fit and the dress form is as well!
All in all, this was a very easy project. I love it when I can find an easy project that makes my daughter very happy. She and Isabelle have been creating all kinds of things.
You may have noticed that I made three dress forms. I plan to give one away in the next American Girl Doll Mega giveaway I will be participating in! I also have one for sale in my Etsy shop. ♥
Have any other easy American Girl doll patterns or projects? Do tell, I’d love to find more fun and easy projects.
More American Girl Doll Fun!
OMG that is adorable! Another thing to add to my craft to-do list.
Thanks, Denise! I hope you have fun making yours if it gets off the craft to-do list. 😉
it looks really good, just perfect!
Your choice of fabric make them very sophisticated, may be good enough to steal from little girls to display little jewelry…
Not that I would ever do that!
Looking forward to your tutu tutorial!
Thank you, Morgane! I think you are right, it would be perfect to display jewelry…I had that thought as well. I also know that if I stole it from my little girl, well, it wouldn’t be worth it in the long run! 😉 I’ll just have to make my own. lol!
KC
LOVE this !! Awesome job KC!
This is wonderful! Love how it turned out, so stylish.
This is so cute. I can’t wait to make these for my girls. Thanks for the idea. Kathy
Thanks! I hope your girls LOVE them! You are welcome for the idea!
KC
I had thought about buying an AG dress form mainly to be able to make clothes for my granddaughter’s doll which doesn’t live with me so I would have something to fit the clothes to. However as I live in the Uk it was going to cost more to post it here than the form cost to buy. So I was delighted when I saw your blog post. Is the dress form the same shape and size as an AG doll so that it could really be used as an actual dress form or is it really just decorative? They certainly look beautiful. Thank you.
I think it is the right size for you to use for making clothes, but I’ve never used a dress from in my life or made up my own patter for clothes….so I’m not sure you should trust my judgement. I think you could make it a perfect fit based on the height of the candlestick you picked as well as how full you filled the form, but I would hate to steer you wrong. Sorry I’m not better help.
Could I have an address where I could send a check for the dress form pattern or a money order. Do you have a catalog?
Thank you for your interest. I don’t have any dress forms available and generally don’t make many items like this for sale. I do have a shop with all kinds of digital products and a few craft kits that you may enjoy. You can check that out at: https://shop.realcoake.com/ Enjoy!