Lil Cutesies Picnic

I'm finally getting to make the first outfit of the year for Lil Cutesies Doll.I love to make play sets when I can to add a little something to the dolls and this picnic set meets that goal. You can purchase the pattern at Mary Maxim here.

The theme for this set is a teddy bear picnic and I did make the bears last year. While I love a play set I spent a good bit of time working on the bears last year and it just didn't seem like a great investment of time. I suspect the child who receives the doll will find other characters to invite to her doll's picnic if so desired.

This again was a good chance to target some yarn I've uncovered when I was sorting through and putting my yarn into crates. I'd bought what I could of AC Moore's house brand Nicole's Stitch Studio Storybook Fanfare sport yarn before they closed. Then it got buried in my stash for a bit and when I was cleaning I realized I needed to target it on doll projects this year and bid it a fond farewell. This yarn has the feel of Caron Simply Soft which has its pros and cons. What I will miss most about this yarn is it was a cheap locally available sport yarn. I didn't have to order it online. That being said since COVID hit I've ordered everything online, but in the old days it was nice being able to find what I wanted locally.

In case I do have any left over when I approach this project again I required an H hook to make the dress fit. The pattern calls for an F hook and Mary Maxim's Baby's Best yarn which is a 2 fine weight but with my f hook and 3 sport weight I found the dress was tight in the back and wouldn't close so I frogged and moved up to an H. I used a different yarn from last year so those notes weren't as helpful. These will give me a starting point for comparison next year

Another note for myself that I didn't make last year is that I didn't follow the blanket pattern. Mine is a simple seed stitch blanket. The blanket pattern here I believe is a Corner to Corner which I have yet to master. It is on my to do but not something worth not finishing a doll project over when the seed picnic blanket works just as niceley. For my own notes the edging is a sc chain 3 for with a sc chain 3 sc in each corner. The second row of the edging is dc chain 2 dc in corner, chain 1 dc 2 in each chain space. I ended up trying to recreate this so this time I'm documenting it for future reference.