Anyway...I'm always on the lookout for nice doll patterns, so I browsed the doll section. I had NO idea so many American Girl patterns were out there!! When Ella gets old enough and wants one, I'm set for life! But I sew for smaller dolls, so I had to weed through all the big ones to find the kind of thing I wanted. I stumbled across a pattern called "Lati Yellow Dress" by Shelley Sellwood. I don't have a lot of BJDs, and the smallest one I have is about 7" tall, and the La Ti Yellow dolls are 10 cm tall!! (4" for us Yanks) But...Kish's Riley has a narrow torso, and Ellery is only 5 inches tall, so I thought I could try the pattern and see if it could work...or if I could tweak it to make it work for slightly larger dolls.
This thing knitted up so fast--it was adorable!! My box of fingering and sock yarns is buried in my sewing room closet, so I used what I had on hand downstairs, which was Cascade Yarn Heritage in a rich wine red. The pattern calls for 4 ply yarn, which I think is fingering in the UK, and 2.5mm needles, which, of course, I don't have...I have 2.25, and 2.75, but not 2.5. Considering all the little knitting I do, you'd think I would have that! But...I used the 2.75, because the yarn is more of a sock weight. I found a few things to tweak...the neck was too loose for my taste, and I needed to run a line of yarn through the cast-on stitches to cinch it up a bit. I think I cast on maybe a little too loosely...not sure on that one. But I made some adjustments, and shortened it, and Voila!
The red one is my first attempt at the top/dress. I love it! This is on an 8" Wendy (Madame Alexander). The blue-green one is my second attempt, in which I tried to correct some of the things that bothered me on my first workup. This time, I used a size 0 needle to cast on and do the first row, then switched to a size 1 for the second row, and a 2 for the rest of it. The fit of the neck was much better. However, this time, I also used a different yarn, which worked up smaller and shorter. I forget what the yarn is (the label is downstairs, and I'm not going to go get it now), but it was definitely a fingering yarn, a smaller diameter than the Cascade Heritage yarn. I wouldn't say it was a lace yarn...a little too big for that. All my lace yarns are finer. But it is a lovely graduated marled yarn, and not all the colorways show on the ball. The tail I pulled out of the center was green marled with a hint of lavender/purple, and as I knit, it got more and more purple. I LOVE the color graduation! I need to make more with this stuff!
Riley is lying down so that the color graduation shows up better!
In my next post, I'll talk Bleuette....stay tuned! (oh, wait...nobody reads this. Sigh.)
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