Island Princess

Barbies were never my thing. In fact dolls were never my thing. When I was little I preferred animal toys and, when I was a little older, historical figurines. My favourite Barbie-related activity was listening to a boy from church talk about his plans to rid the world of Barbies through means such as melting or lasers. I spent my childhood avoiding the ‘pink aisle’ in Kmart and didn’t enter it willingly until I was 16 and needed a costume for a barbie-themed party. I put together an appropriately princess-y costume from the dress-up box and made myself a full length velour cape the day before.

I have since made velour capes for cousins and another one for myself to wear as ‘real clothes’, without the train, since mum said the trained one was too much of a hazard (for other people) on the stairs.

While researching for this party I got past a lot of my Barbie aversion because they do have some very nice dresses – and nowadays no-one’s expecting me to play with dolls.

All this meant that when my cousin requested a ‘Barbie as the Island Princess’ costume for Christmas one year I looked on the project more positively than I otherwise might have done. It was a new challenge (adapting dolls’ clothes) and a nice dress.

I used Butterick 4887 as a pattern for the basic dress shape as I had made it for this cousin before. I think I reduced the skirts a bit the second time because that pattern has so much skirt.

The first Butterick 4887 dress, seen here with afore-mentioned velour capes.

In order to give the impression of patterned fabric on the skirt, I used a layer of lace fabric over the satin. It was sewn into the seams and hem in order to appear as one skirt and not as a separate overlayer. The pink overlayer was draped.

After much consideration I decided that the straight neckline with attached sheer Bolero-like sleeves was not going to be practical on a child’s gown. Instead I used the bodice pattern as is and made it all out of satin.

I had bought three different sequined fabrics for the stomacher, but when they were put together the differences in colour and pattern were distracting. Instead I used the same fabric on all three levels but layered it so the colour got darker with each layer. The whole thing is lined with pink which showed through under the top layer.

The dress was very popular with its recipient.




Barbie belongs to Mattel.