Summer Dresses for Nancy Drew & Her Crew: Free Pattern

I finally made some summer dresses for Nancy Drew, and her friends, Bess and George. When I was working on the designs, I spent some time pouring over the beautiful cover illustrations that have been a trade-mark of the classic Nancy Drew series, since it's beginning in 1930.

I noticed that the sleuthing trio are often dressed in primary colors, and that Nancy appears quite a few times in monochromatic dark blue, or bright yellow. Since my Nancy, Bess, and George dolls are inspired by the 1950s and early 1960s Nancy Drew illustrations, I decided to try my hand at some summery outfits, inspired by the shirt-dresses on Rudy Nappi covers.

Each miniature dress is actually a blouse, skirt, and detachable belt with a wire buckle. I took a picture of my pattern and uploaded it below, along with instructions. Enjoy!

Making a Nancy Drew inspired Shirt-dress:

Materials:

• 1/4 yard of light cotton.
• 1 yard of 1/8" ribbon for embellishments.
• Seed beads for buttons
• 6" of elastic cord
• Snaps or hook-and-eye fasteners. 

Making the Blouse:

• Sew the darts
• Sew front and back pieces together along the sides and shoulders.
• Sew the ends of each sleeve piece together, hem the bottoms, and sew the sleeves into the arm-holes (you could also leave the sleeves off, and hem the arm-holes for a more summery look).
• Trim the sleeves and neckline with ribbon. To get different looks, you can stitch ribbon down the front of the blouse to make a faux button placket, add a ribbon bow to the neckline, or sew ribbon on in a sailor-collar design.
• Stitch one or two seed-beads to the outside of each ribbon cuff, and add beads wherever else you would like buttons.
• Hem the bottom and back edges of the blouse, and add fasteners to the back, for a snug fit.

 Scale: each square on the graph-paper should be 1/4"

Making the Skirt:

Since different Barbie molds can be slightly different heights, i think it's easiest to create a skirt by measuring from the doll's waist to where you want it to end (to the widest part of the calf, for a 1950s look). Then add 1/2" for the seam allowances. Cut a strip, that is that number long, and about 14-16" wide. 

The pieces that I used for the skirts in the picture measured about 4.5" long, and 16" wide.

• Stitch the two short ends of the strip together.
• Sew a 1/4" hem on the bottom edge. 
• Fold over and sew 1/4" on the top edge, thread with elastic cord, and gather to fit doll's waist.   

Making the Belt:

• To make a belt buckle, bend a piece of wire into a 1/8" squarish figure 8 shape (like the drawing above).
• Glue one end of a length of ribbon around the center bar of the 8, and then thread the the end through the buckle.
• Alternatively, you could fasten the belt, at the back, with a hook-and-eye fastener.