Birkat Chaverim Blog

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while. I had been eyeing the top of a sock that was a remnant from a sock made into a skirt and dress for Barbie. It looked a bit Peter Pan-ish. In the end I measured Barbie’s head, cut a piece of elastic, slightly smaller than her head, and sewed it in a circle inside the sock. This is the circumference of the Barbie head.

I tried to make sure that the elastic was stretched to the length of the sock material (if that makes sense,) so it would fit Barbie’s head afterwards. Once the elastic was sewn in, I trimmed the sock seam, did a bit of cutting here and there, added a feather, and voila! Barbie has a stylish hat. The (child) recipient of this hat was quite pleased. As I was writing this post she said, “That’s my baby!” For her all dolls and bears are babies.

Materials used:
Top of an old sock
Elastic
Feather
needle and thread

You may use whatever embellishments you wish. We may add a ribbon or flower at some point.

Sock bathing suit

I showed the girls the Barbie clothing (see post on birth of chug for picture)  and Build a Bear outfit (currently unphotographed.) Barbies have a really large selection of clothing choices- baby socks make great shirts, children’s socks have great colors and patterns and are easy skirts or pants. With a little sewing men and women’s socks become sophisticated dresses, sweaters or pants. The top of socks can become barrettes or winter hats. In another post I’ll show an example of a hat.
The Build a Bears (or other bears of that size) are larger- they seem to come in two sizes.

Glove as Barbie skirt

When the girls were looking for socks to use for their clothing in the pile of socks, I asked them to make sure that they pulled the socks over the bears hips to be sure that their outfit was going to fit. Mostly that left us with black or white sport socks, but we did have an occasional find of other color winter sport socks or children’s socks with extra stretch. The bear sporting the bathing suit was lucky enough to encounter a stretchy child’s sock. There was also a cute grey sports sock which was made into a dress. Most of the girls did not finish their outfits in the first week.

This chug or workshop evolved from a gift to my daughter of naked Barbies and because my niece was sick.

She received a bunch of hand-me-down toys (we love hand me downs- reuse, recycle!) including three Barbies, with only one outfit. While I don’t particullary mind when some of her other baby dolls end up without a stitch of clothing, I am not such a fan of naked Barbies.Â
I began to search for quick clothing options for Barbie. Since my sewing machine is still in storage, that meant crochet or handsewing. There are some great crochet patterns and sewing patterns available for free on the internet such as at bevscountrycottage.com. My goal was to use stuff I already had at home, I was mostly thinking about crochet since I already do toys for my daughter and her friends (think frog puppets around Pesach etc.) Then I stumbled on a few posts about using socks for Barbie clothing, and then doll clothing. My initial foray into Barbie sock clothing was a dress from a lonely men’s sock (see picture).
I then stumbled upon a blog with sock clothing suggestions and made the sweater that Barbie two is wearing, from a white sport sock.
My two year old was extremely pleased. I was actually surprised with how much she loved it. I eventually also made a skirt and sweater outfit. What I love about these outfits are they are really quick to make and fairly forgiving.
I showed the clothing to my nieces who really enjoyed the idea, but since my daughter’s Barbies were formerly their Barbies, it wasn’t per say a practical thing for them.

More about this next time…