Oh guys, it’s been a journey, I must say. More about that later. At the moment I’m *grateful* that I still have technology enough to produce a reasonably decent printable pattern. We have moved off grid, kind of feels like we fell off the world computer-wise. I have Android and a little solar battery and…
I see a real need for this. It’s a simple, quick dress to fit any Barbie shape. We have a pile of naked Barbies. They need clothes quick, and they should be able to share. Let’s go. Here’s a simple shift dress that pulls on, with a tie in the back. The other, a basic…
Here’s another dress pattern to make your own outfits for Best Fashion Friend Barbie. NOTE this is NOT the regular height Barbie, this is the big 28 inch super sized one! But not 36 inch My Size Barbie either. I don’t have clothes for the 36″ one. For the regular size 11.5 inch tall Barbie…
I realize this is Thanksgiving week and there are a lot of grandmas out there who need some 28″ Barbie clothing in a hurry, so I’m sharing this pattern for you, in its unfinished state. I’m planning to do more work on it later. Here is a dress I made from this draft back in…
Here’s a full length spiral dress for a grown-up! …with wolves on it. When I was a teenager, I found a spiral dress at a second hand shop. It was too small for me, but I was so fascinated with those seams going round and round that I bought it anyway. Eventually I decided it…
Free pattern for a basic strapless dress that can be made any length. Note this is for the LARGE 28-inch Barbie doll, not the regular size 11.5″ ones. Those patterns are elsewhere. Download and print the PDF pattern here — FREE for personal use Lay out the pages like this. Butt the edges of the…
Easy and quick homemade scrapwork potholders make great DIY gifts! You don’t need a pattern and they’re FREE to make out of fabric scraps. Most of the instructions I found for quilted potholders use bias binding, like commercial potholders. But it’s so hard to sew bias binding on straight. Why not cut the backing larger…
All patterns are Adobe pdf for free download and printing. They print out onto sheets of 8.5 x 11 printer paper which you tape together then cut out. Be sure they print out at 100% size not “scale to fit” the paper. The skirts can be made any size you need by using whatever number…
Free Printable Pattern. Someone requested an off-the-shoulder dress. I only glanced at the email and suddenly had a great idea how to do that, and in a flash of creativity, produced this. No, no, she had said “off the shoulder”. Oops. Well, I guess it was time for me to make Barbie a one shoulder…
Here’s a free pattern in pdf format to print. This one can be a bodice to add a skirt to, or lengthen the lines to make a flattering princess seams dress. I appreciate a pattern that doesn’t involve shoulder seams. Every fiddly step eliminated makes it that much easier. It has a simple, modest neckline…
By request! I seem to have moved back to the 1840s. At least I have my hard drive and a folding solar panel. So I used the lovely Ivy Draw, cool vector editor for Android that I’ve talked about here, to trace the photo I took of the pattern, and here you are. Printing to…
From back in May 2009 I’m putting it back because it is still one of my favorite stories! I went to the free swap at the library, bringing my bags of old junk and expecting some other, fresher and thus more fun junk in return. I did not expect a Pfaff sewing machine to be…
Therapy crochet while I listened to a message at home. I started messing with dishcloth cotton because I need some more dishrags, kinda reinvented the wheel (this basic sc lace doily idea’s been around since early times) but then added another petal in between to make twelve instead of six, and AFAIK that’s new. I’m…
Built from the septagon mat, but I decided to make this a separate post. I was so tickled with how the septagon design looked that I wanted to make some more using flower colors. Good luck joining seven sided motifs, so it had to turn into eight. But a square is simpler! While messing around…
I wanted, not a dishcloth, but a cotton round to lie on the kitchen counter for cushion under pans and things. I wanted it openwork for more ventilation. 1) Dig through the internet for two hours 2) There’s nothing like that 3) Invent something. Not that I really cared until I started, but there aren’t…
Could it be this easy? Just add a knob to the hand wheel? I didn’t know, but the motor doesn’t work any more, so there was nothing to lose by trying. I drilled a hole in the hand wheel and attached a bit of dowel with a screw. Voila, a modern zigzag hand crank sewing…
I’ve had some kind of block lately and have to force myself to write. This is an exercise. The website name was also an exercise in self-acceptance many years ago. I grew up disliking my name, but in retrospect that may have been because people only called me by it when they were angry. I…
But can it make Spirographs? Yes, it can! Only basic ones, not fancy designs like Illustrator, but they’re pretty and they’re easy and fun. They scratch my Spirograph itch. Here’s a basic oval that was Selection – Duplicated, then the copies rotated. It really only takes moments once you’re used to how Ivy Draw operates….
If you need to transfer sewing patterns or other patterns from pdf document to paper without a printer, here’s one method using Ivy Draw. Craft magazines used to come with miniature patterns on a grid to be enlarged onto graph paper. Nowadays it’s rare because of printers. But sometimes you don’t have a printer. Ivy…
Loving this app! Absolute genius and SO affordable. It fills in the gap when I need to get something done and I’m not near Illustrator. I couldn’t find much in the way of a manual or tutorials, so here I’m compiling my own guide page as I figure things out. Have patience with a work…
It’s about as simple, basic and easy as a sewing pattern can get. Free pdf to print at home. Free pinafore dress pattern with modest neckline and long armholes. Adult woman/misses size. This is a multi-size pattern I made up several years ago. Nowadays I think I made the sizing more generous than it needs…
I was having a granny square thing for a while and churned out a bunch of scrapghans. But what about a granny crochet diamond? I can’t remember what got me on the idea of a diamond shape, which is sad, because usually the long-winded story of the whole course of the inspiration and development is…
Amazing! From my imagination to a motiv that was exactly what I had in mind, on the first try. That’s not usually how it goes. I’ll have a try at writing the pattern. If you see any errors let me know. With center color, ch4, join with sl st In the ring, ch3, sc, (ch1,…
Here’s the latest tidying of my website! I wanted it to be completely on WordPress since I’m about to move off grid and need to be able to make all my changes online. Wait, does that sound backwards? I’m going where there’s no power, so I won’t be able to run Dreamweaver on my desktop…
I love Miss Blue’s beautiful space princess hair. Of course my first dress for her had to be a princess seams sundress. Princess seams are not a very easy design to create. I set out to do a strapless at first, but it didn’t happen and this did. Might be because I can identify with…
The goal was to make a square chart for cross-stitch or needlepoint by tracing a background image onto a grid. I found various methods to make the chart, but nothing about how to color it other than resorting to something like bitmap painting with the fill tool. There are plenty of ways to automatically digitize…