HARLEYVILLE -- Barbie was well into her 30s when a Harleyville woman decided the popular doll could use a few wardrobe additions. Myrtle Fry, now 80, began hemming and stitching her way into a new hobby.

Fry had no formal training as a dressmaker, learning only what her mother, the late Estelle Canaday, taught her during childhood and from the sewing classes she took during a home economics course in high school. But she found herself making dresses for her cousins and other members of her family, especially her granddaughter, Jaimee Knight Sweatman, now 31.

When Sweatman was about 10 years old, she received a Barbie doll for Christmas.

"Jaimee wanted more clothes for her new Barbie doll," Fry said.

So she set to work.

"First, I measured the doll's waist and figured out how long it was, and then I kept cutting out patterns until I got it right," Fry said. "They're all made basically the same."

She still has the first Barbie dress she ever made: a pale-yellow satin fabric with a generous lace trim around the bottom and lace accents at the neck and wrists.

After her first attempt, Fry went on to make more dresses for Barbie over the years -- more than 1,000, she estimates.

For several years during Harleyville's annual See Saw Daze Festival, Fry set up a booth to sell the doll dresses for $10 each. On one occasion, a young girl approached Fry at the festival and asked how much money she would need to purchase one of the dresses for her Barbie doll.

Fry said she asked the young girl, "How much money do you have?"

She said the child stretched her arm out to her, opening her hand to reveal four pennies. Fry told the little girl, "I believe that will be enough to buy your Barbie doll a dress."

A local man later commissioned Fry to make a Barbie wedding dress identical to the dress his daughter was to wear on her wedding. Being that she had never made a wedding dress to fit a Barbie, Fry said she wasn't sure what kind of price tag she should put on the formal doll attire.

When the man paid her $250 for the dress, Fry said she accepted it hesitantly, thinking it was too much.

The Barbie dress she is most proud of, though, belongs to her grandson Jason Knight's wife, Shelly Smith Knight. While Fry was making Shelly's actual wedding gown 13 years ago, she also made a miniature version of it to adorn a Barbie doll. Both Knight's gown and the one tailored to fit Barbie feature satin fabric and elaborate lace and beadwork.

Fry gradually stopped making Barbie dresses. She's since made a dress or two to fit an American Girl doll -- dresses made to order for her great-granddaughter, Tiger Lily.

Looking back on her years of Barbie dressmaking, Fry said she is thankful that she was able to add to the wardrobe of the famous American icon, who turns 50 on March 9.



"I seem to be hearing a lot about Barbie in the news these days," she said.

T&D Correspondent Martha Rose Brown can be reached by e-mail at marfawose@aol.com. Discuss this and other stories online at TheTandD.com.

You must be logged in to comment.