Dot.Tea's Vintage Tea Boutique Window Display

In July I was asked to help out with the Dot.Tea's window display in Westbourne, Bournemouth. Dot. Tea's is renowned around Westbourne for their creative and fun window displays and so I was very excited to be part of such a fun project. This season's window display was all about holidays and Dot's needed some vintage style holiday clothes to be made for a gaggle of Barbies / Sindys and one Ken!
This was a dream project for me; being an overgrown child I have a soft spot for toys and of course making vintage style clothes is a passion of mine so the two combined made my creative juices very juicy indeed. I started out trying to freehand make the clothes but quickly realised that this wasn't going to work well as plastic dolls arms do not bend in the same way as ours, so therefore the clothes need to open in specific ways. Luckily when explaining the project to my mother, she remembered that she had a Barbie dressmaking pattern from my actual childhood and was able to post it out. This saved a lot of befuzzlement and although the patterns were very 1980s-ish I was able to adapt them to look more classic in style. Here are some of the outfits I made:

Like many crafters I have a huge hoard of fabric scraps, so this project was perfect for diving into those. As you can see I made an air stewardess style outfit, swimsuits, a circle skirt halter dress, shift dresses and was even able to utilise some of my friend Rachel Cave's lovely fabric.

Here's some photos of the dolls up in the window:

I'm really pleased with how the project turned out and to have been involved with something so unusual and fun! If you'd like to see the display in the flesh then it will be up at Dot.Tea's in Westbourne until October!