Little Red Riding Hood Baby Doll

I've always been a fan of combining play with children's books. This year's theme for the older child I was making gifts ford was Little Red Riding Hood. I found different versions of the story and worked on ways to bring the story to life. One was to give her baby doll a Little Red outfit of its own.

If you ever explore the world of baby doll crochet patterns you will discover you can't always find exactly what you want for patterns. You often have to do quite a bit of adaptation. Even if you find the right theme it may not be the right size. 18 inch dolls have had a broader appeal for designers and you often see more themed patterns for outfits. I've used some of these from time to time to help me reconstruct items for the baby dolls, too.

This outfit was made from a combination of patterns. I chose an 18 inch doll pattern that can be purchased here for the cape. This is an easy cape pattern to work up and when I purchased it I had the Red Riding Hood theme in mind. I needed a dress for Baby Hood to wear. I had recently come across a free pattern I hadn't tried out yet that was done in turquoise with white trim. I decided to make white my primary color and pick up the red from the cape. You can find that free pattern here. Lastly while Baby Hood may not be walking she wasn't going off into the woods without shoes. This was accomplished with another free pattern, one of the few that fit her feet, found here.

Just a note on the dress the free pattern is written in UK terms. I ended up crossing out the UK terms and writing in the US terms as I've learned from pervious experiences while I tell myself I'll remember to translate my brain doesn't. As it was I had to pull out the contrasting color as I'd made it in dc instead of sc as I noticed I didn't cross out all the UK references as I thought. This is just a note to myself in case I reprint the pattern at some point. As much as I think I can mentally translate and remember, I tend to forget.