Friday, February 14, 2025

Our Generation Boy Heart Sweater, Pants and Hat



Happy Valentine's Day.

There are not many crochet clothing patterns designed for the 18 inch boy dolls. Most tend to be costumes. I've learned to pick the girl items that I think are generic enough and adapt them to fit the boy doll.

This outfit is a combination of pants I've just been making for years, a Tara Cousins' Girl Heart Sweater and Shoes pattern, and the Hat from an Adoring Doll Easter pattern for the Boy doll.

Notes:

I've been playing with doll pants for years and still experimenting. This pair was made by crocheting over a hair elastic with an H hook for the waist and then crocheting in rounds until I reached the waist. I went a row too long for the waist I believe. I increased rows hdc 5 inch for 3 rows I believe as the top section was snug to slide on and off. I split with a chain four. At this point with the increases the legs had to be decreased to 21 stitches per leg. These are my notes for future reference and not designed as a pattern to share.

The sweater and shoes are from a Tara Cousins pattern that can be purchased here.

I used an I hook for the sweater and added a row of hdc with some decreases around the collar to fill in the off the shoulder look for the boy.

Looking at my records I'm not sure I've ever made the long sleeved version of this sweater before. I know I've made the short sleeved one several times.

I chose to close the back of the sweater with buttons. She uses a different method that didn't seem practical for little hands.

I finished the back of the sweater and added buttons and holes. The winter shoes work up with the suggested g hook as written.

The Hat is from Adoring Doll's Easter Outfit for the Boy that can be purchased here. I'm hoping to make the Easter outfit to add to the donation later.

I need to work on the brim for the hat. I don't think I'm quite joining this correctly but hopefully this will work out better with the Easter outfit.

While the holiday will have passed with the donation in the future I'm still working on Valentine's outfits for some of the other dolls. One of the advantages of the Valentine theme is hearts can be worn year round making them a little more practical for doll clothes.

Thursday, February 13, 2025

Our Generation Back to School



I actually consulted my notes from last year's project and knew I wanted most of the pieces from Adoring Doll's Back to School pattern for the Our Generation Valentine outfit but I wanted a replacement skirt. You can purchase the pattern here.

I hadn't liked the construction when I made the one from this pattern last year. Looking at previous skirt projects I decided to go with one of my favorite free skirt patterns the Gored Ribbed Effect Skirt that you can find here.


Notes:

I'm going to start my notes with the Adoring Doll Pattern and then move on to the substitute skirt. The pictures below are for me. For some reason this shirt challenges my brain and seeing the visual makes a difference because once I got to the joining stage it made sense but up to that point I was not quite sure of my outcome.

I used the suggested G hook for the boots. I tend to have to use a larger hook for the My Life dolls but the Our Generation seem to fit as suggested.

The shirt and jacket required an I hook.

A reminder for my next attempt the math for row one of the shirt is correct despite it not always feeling correct. When in doubt start again.



Skirt:

I used a hair elastic for the skirt waist and crocheted around it.

The pattern suggested an H hook and it worked for me.

I'd consider using Herschner's worsted 4 for a future project where the colors weren't the issue as they were for this project. I'm thinking the FPTR might not be quite as bulky. I still love the look of this skirt, I just think it is worth trying to see how it looks as I'm thinking of adding a few more of these skirts for both types of 18 inch dolls.



Wednesday, February 12, 2025

My Life Valentine Outfit



This is one of the oldest Adoring Doll Patterns I still regurally rotate through my donation. I am a huge supporter of her work. I found this one back when she was just starting to introduce her work on her blog and I followed her on to Etsy where I can say I own most of her stuff that I use frequently for the donation. The patterns are varied in theme but easy to follow. They have stayed affordable over the years and she still puts them on sale. For someone who donates what they make this is a huge plus.

You can purchase this Valentine set here.



Notes:

I used an I hook for most of this pattern.

In order to get the slip stitches in I added them slightly differently than the designer.

After row 1 return to the start of row 1 and complete a row of pink slip stitches finish off pink and continue on with white and row 2.

After row 2 I repeated above for second set of ss.

At the end of row 9 repeat this for ss that heart will sit on.

There are portions of text that can be challenging to read while working. I started marking the end of each row of text with a stitch marker. This just made it easy to go back to a section if I got interrupted, the count seemed off, etc. I've tried writing out the text in different ways over the years and this worked for getting through some of the longer sections.

After reading last year's notes I did use the heart pattern from Adoring Doll's Back to School Pattern which I'm using for the Our Generation Valentine outfit. You can purchase that here. I used the heart pattern to make some heart ornaments. It is the easiest heart pattern I've found.

I finished off the back and neck with a row of sc adding a button hole for the dress.

Hat and shoes were made with I hook.

Sweater:

I hook

I added 2 sc rows to arms and finished them with a sc chain 3 skip on around

I finished complete edge of sweater in process of making suggested button hole I just preffered a finished look.

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