The subject of making doll patterns derived from human patterns came up recently in a Facebook group I belong to. The first thing to realize is dolls are not proportioned like real humans. I had a pattern I wanted to customize to Gene size so I took some pics along the way to show you my process. It's not as straightforward as simply enlarging the pieces.
This is the design I chose to work on where I also had pics of the pieces from the pattern envelope. Not the easiest one in the world.
I started by enlarging the pieces 200% on my printer to make them easier to measure. The measurements I start with are across the back, and shoulder point to shoulder point. Some people are smart enough to do this digitally but I use a proportional scale and enlarged all the pieces again to the back measurements I want. This is important because human patterns are usually designed for a B cup---and Gene is definitely not a B cup. So if you use her entire bust measurement as your guide, the back of the garment will be way too big for her. So I fit the back first and make adjustments to accommodate the larger bust.
The first thing I need to do is lengthen the waist line-in this case 5/8" based on center back and underarm measurements. I slashed the pattern pieces at the waist and spread them. The pieces are taped to examining table paper (thanks to Missy's Imaginings for that idea). It's somewhat transparent which helps fit the pieces to each other. If you carry the lines down from the bodice, you get pretty close to Gene's back waist measurement. But you can see where I've made small adjustments. Since this is a full skirt, I'm not worried about the hip measurement.
This is where I run into my first issue. The skirt pieces line up and match in the length but the bodice pieces don't line up at all, So I had to redraw the armhole as well as take in the side seam based on Gene's back measurement from underarm to underarm.
Her are the finished back and side back patterns with seam allowances added. You will always need to lengthen the skirts for dolls as they have proportionately longer legs. So I measured down from her waist to where I thought I wanted the flounce to start. Normally you would slash and spread the skirt to the desired length but I want this skirt to be really full so I just continued the original lines.
I followed the same procedure with the side front, making sure that the side seam matches the back. The front is a lot trickier. I had to lengthen the waistline more that 5/8" because of the larger bust. Measure from the shoulder over the bust to the waist to get this measurement. The extra length will be taken up with a bigger dart. You can see from the picture that I needed to establish a new dart point. The three measurements for this are bust point to bust point, shoulder to bust point, and bust point to waist. Then I measure the side front seam from the waist up to determine how much I needed to take out in the dart. You'll notice that I slashed and spread the front bodice. This was done for two reasons. One is to give me the extra width I needed across the front due to the bigger bust. Measure from the underarm to underarm across the fullest part of the bust for this. The other reason is that the shoulder seams didn't match. I lengthened the skirt to match the side front as well. Remember to constantly measure all the seams against the pieces they connect to.
The finished front lengthened and with seam allowances added. The original dress had a separate side flounce piece but I decided to do it in one piece. Not shown: I decided I wanted this part of the flounce wider so I slashed and spread it out more. I also combined the back and side back flounces into one piece.
I kept the original sleeve cap after measuring it against the armhole opening. The sleeve cap should be slightly longer to be eased into the armhole. Obviously the original sleeve had an elbow dart which I left out. The measurement around the upper arm was good but sleeves have to be lengthened as well. Measure around the doll's hand to make sure the sleeve will fit over it. I add a little ease here to account for seams and lining.
Collar pieces often don't fit and since I lowered the neckline a little, I knew this one would need adjusting. Walk the collar piece around the neckline. I made a mark where it meets the should seam. You can see that I needed to extend it to fit around the back neck seam. So this is what I spent my whole Friday afternoon doing. But I still won't cut this out of silk fabric without making a muslin of it first. It should be close but will undoubtedly need tweaking. I'll take some photos of that process and let you know how in goes in the next post.
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