Restoring Barbie's Little Friends

Andrea inherited a stash of small dolls from her cousin Ava. Though in good condition, they were what you would typically expect from a doll after a little girl has played with it for a few years: tangled hair, missing accessories. I thought they were cute and it would be nice if Andrea can play with little girl dolls in a few years instead of the big girl fashion dolls like Barbie.

I wanted to make sure they will be ready for Andrea so I tried to buy stuff for them at the mall. I initially thought they were Kelly dolls. I thought all little girl dolls associated with Barbie were Kelly's... how wrong I was! Anyway, the mall doesn't carry accessories for Kelly dolls according to the sales person I spoke to. I tried online and still... nada!

While searching online, I discovered that my favorite doll of the stash was not a Kelly but a nameless little girl doll who was a student of the Teacher Barbie doll. Our stash has 4 of those student dolls but the one with thick, long brown hair is my favorite.

I found a video of the commercial for Teacher Barbie online and this is what the doll originally looks like.

Since there were no clothes that can be bought for this doll, I tried to make one on my own. The material came from an old t-shirt. I can't hem, so I needed material that won't fray. I didn't use a pattern and this is my first attempt so the fit isn't that great. I also made underpants, though you can't see it from the photo.

To detangle her hair, I washed it first with shampoo and applied conditioner to smoothen. Then I read somewhere that to set the hair, use heat. So I used a blow drier with the heat set to high to flatten her bangs (which were all sticking up every which way when we got her). Then when her hair dried, I reset her pony tails using purple elastic to match her new dress.

This is another doll from the stash. From my research, this baby is the patient that came with Dr. Barbie (a very small baby doll!). She didn't have any clothes when we got her so I tried to make something for her out of the same old purple t-shirt.

It was actually fun restoring these dolls. This site helped me a lot when I was trying to identify my dolls: http://www.kattisdolls.net/. Here are other dolls I have yet to work on:

Until I figure out who they are, I'm calling them all "Kelly" for now.