Lots to Love 8 inch Doll Valentine Gent

I am very pleased to say my Valentine packaged arrived several days earlier than the post office predicted. For those of you who have been shipping things or waiting for packages to arrive you can appreciate what a blessing this was for the day.

With the Valentine package gone I've had a chance to make some decorations for myself before moving on to the St. Patrick's Day box. I started with the Valentine Gent and am currently working on the Valentine Gal.

As I mentioned when I wrote about the Thanksgiving doll this pattern is from an out of print House of White Birches leaflet Crochet Holiday Baby Dolls 101102. I was recently pleased to find the out of print companion leaflet Dress Up Baby Dolls from the same publisher and designer. That leaflet has non-holiday outfits and will be useful for the 8 inch Lots to Love Doll I'll be donating for the annual doll donation.

Notes:

This pattern set is designed for a 9 1/2 inch baby doll but height is often misleading when looking at patterns to adapt. I originally thought this series would be closer to the 10" doll but as I worked with the patterns I realized height isn't the only issue for these dolls. The Lots to Love dolls are chubbier but shorter. This has allowed me to fit these outfits to the 8 inch Lots to Love dolls where I think they'd be harder to fit to the 10 inch dolls. I may experiment more with the other leaflet as I can always use more donation patterns but I was only seeking one line of holiday dolls to decorate with and the 8 inch dolls are actually a better size for this purpose.

The shirt fit well without needing to adapt the pattern. I used worsted weight yarn instead of the suggested sport yarn and the suggested g hook. This helped deal with the more generous round Lots to Love tummy. I needed to make adjustments to make the pants fit. I originally followed the pattern and then realized this is where the height of the other doll was an issue. The Lots to Love doll has shorter legs. I joined the legs after row 2 and then moved on to the directions for row 5. Follow with one row of half double crochet. This makes legs a good length.

The cloth heart buttons came from Joann and I recently reordered them along with some Shamrock ones to use with St. Patrick's Day projects The rose in the doll's hand is also part of a Valentine themed button set. I'm afraid I don't remember where that set came from. It has already been split up as I've used different pieces of it on various projects. The rose seemed a perfect fit for this project.