There are hundreds of dress-up apps available for iPad, but dressmaking apps? They’re not quite so common. Barbie Fashion Design Maker is the latest one.

Released by Mattel – so it’s fully official – it’s an app for children to create their own range of clobber for a virtual Barbie to wear. It’s a creative fashion app, which aims to get children exploring more than just its 90 built-in patterns.

“Use your own photographs as design elements for your fashions. Level up your designer ranking by completing challenges and winning awards,” explains its App Store listing.

Mattel reckons there are more than 10,000 possible colour combinations within the app, with the photo element adding even more scope for kids to explore their ideas.

Whatever they create can be saved, and even printed out (although we’re dubious about how good the printouts will look when slapped onto a real Barbie doll, as the app suggests).

A strange bit of legalese from the App Store listing: “We reserve the right to terminate the Barbie Fashion Design Maker application after January 15, 2016.” Well, that gives kids a year and a half, we guess!

Barbie Fashion Design Maker is a free download for iPad from Apple’s App Store. And if Barbie isn’t your child’s thing, but virtual clothing creation is, then we can thoroughly recommend Makies FabLab or Toca Tailor.

Read about more Barbie apps for kids on Apps Playground, and check out our 100 Best iPad Apps of 2013 e-book – £1.99 from Apple’s iBooks Store