Barbie Nightgown

I still have to go back and finish Chelsea's nightgown from the AG mini pattern but I wanted to explore my Barbie binders to find something for Barbie. I hit this one first, although I suspect there are more in the collection. I rather liked this one and decided to make it the next nightgown for the challenge.

I returned to my out of print newsprint House of White Birches Crochet Wardrobe for 11.5 inch Fashion Dolls. There are a couple of options for night wear for Barbie. I chose the negligee pattern.

The original pattern uses size 10 thread with a starting chain of 60. I suspected this wasn't going to work but I try to see where these older patterns are going because they can surprise me.

Sure enough this was huge. Even reducing to size 20 thread it was still enormous. That's when it was time to use some crochet math to decrease the pattern and save my size 20 thread for other projects.

I started with a 50 percent decrease but it was not to be an easy math day. Decreasing that much made it too small. However a 75 percent decrease with some rounding and a few adjustments made for the fit I needed.

Notes:

I used size 10 thread and a 1.25mm hook for this outfit.

Chain 45 After making the math changes to rows 1 and 2 the only additional adjustments were to the row counts as they were now smaller than the original pattern. However the basic pattern worked with the reduced counts.

There is a 3 stitch cluster between each sc set. The cluster being 3 sc in one stitch.

Row 1: sc 6 cluster sc 11 cluster sc 7 cluster sc 11 cluster sc 6 total 53 stitches

Row 2: sc 7 chain 8 skip 14 sc 11 chain 8 skip 14 7 sc

Follow rest of instructions as written with understanding stitch count will differ.

Also as a note to myself clearest way to know you've made a mistake is clusters should not be stacked on top of each other they should alternate rows. If this pattern is not occuring you have made a mistake. I noticed this a couple of times and was able to go back and fix before I'd gone too far.

One mistake I did make is not counting total number of rows it took to complete for the length of this doll. The pattern calls for 40 but I don't have an accurate count. I worked on this between other projects as the repitition can be a bit dull at times. I also like to give my hands a break from the smaller hooks.