Clara Ballerina Soft Doll Sewing Pattern
I am so elated to share my newest sewing pattern with you! My oldest daughter is an advanced ballerina and so ballet has been a big part of our family due to her all out passion for it these last many years. Through her influence, I’ve fallen in love with the ballet world along with her — the costumes, the music, behind-the-scenes, and the ballet itself.
That’s probably why this new pattern is near and dear to my heart. The Clara Ballerina Doll is the newest PDF pattern in my shop, or you can also purchase it on Etsy if you prefer. She comes with thorough instructions with lots of photos, and includes patterns for all her clothes: leotard, ballet wrap skirt, leg warmers and of course, her tutu.
This doll pattern is different from my more beginner friendly rag doll patterns, as she includes some more technical elements. However, I am busy creating a series of videos to help less experienced sewists feel confident in trying this pattern. Those videos will be for the more intermediate skills involved, like creating the yarn hair (it’s much easier than you think!), embroidering doll faces, and assembling the moveable, button joint arms. I will update this post when I have those videos up on my YouTube channel, which will happen in the next week.
Clara Ballerina Doll’s Clothes
When I first started designing doll patterns and was researching what people want in a doll pattern, I noticed many people desired rag dolls that have changeable clothes. I totally remember that being the best part of playing with dolls when I was young, and I know that’s what my own kids loved about dolls too, so it was a no brainer to make lots of clothes for my doll patterns.
Clara ballerina comes with all the dance clothes she needs, but I tool care to create patterns and instructions that are less fussy to sew, being so tiny and made from delicate fabrics. The wrap skirt and leotard, for example, are sewn as two layers, to avoid stitching tiny hems, and I came up with a unique method for sewing the tutu in the flat, making it much easier than other methods I’ve seen for making doll tutus.
Fabrics for the Clara Ballerina Doll
For the ballet doll, you’ll need some nice skin tone fabrics. Interestingly, I had a much harder time finding light skin tones than I did brown ones. I found three choices for brown, but couldn’t find the nice Kona peachy skin tone I found for the Phoebe Rag Doll Babies. I’m not giving up on that one, but I did find a nice enough pinkish white at Hobby Lobby and made that work.
For clothes for this doll, my best tips is to harvest fabrics from your family’s giveaway pile. This is the best way to find knits for the doll’s leotard, chiffon or other flowy fabrics for the wrap skirt, sweater knits for cute leg warmers, etc … especially if you have a dancer in the house with dance wear they’ve outgrown!
If you do need to purchase fabrics, I suggest heading first to the remnant bins at your fabric store. There is almost always chiffon in there, as well as many stretch knits and you’ll save money by using the remnants too.
For the tutu, you can avoid the hassle of tulle yardage and use the 6” wide tulle spools! They’re perfect for this and are so much easier to use. Plus, they come in lots of colors (WAY more colors can be found at Hobby Lobby than at JoAnn, oddly.)
For hair, any yarn will do and I think you’ll be surprised at how easy yarn doll hair is to make and apply. The pattern will teach you how to make a “weft” of hair on your sewing machine and then stitch it to the finished doll by hand. Once I learned how to do it, I wanted to try all kinds of hair styles! I already have the coolest yarn picked out for the boy ballet dancer doll I want to design next.
I so hope you enjoy this new pattern. The Clara doll will be the sweetest gift for little ballerinas in your life, or for any little girl. Make the doll with all her little clothes and she’s the perfect handmade present! I think even my teenage daughter and her dance friends would love to receive a doll like this.
Enjoy!
Nikki
