Lil Cutesies Dress Set

I've been looking to add patterns for the Lil Cutesies 8.5" Baby Doll and a kind friend from Crochetville gifted me this pattern from Ravelry. You can purchase the pattern here.

It's always fun to try out patterns from designers you haven't used before and I had looked at this designer's patterns frequently for the smaller sized dolls. She just never made it to the top of my purchase list.

The patterns are written in UK crochet terms but the designer kindly includes a chart that lists the US and UK equivelent terms. I still end up writing the US terms on top of the UK terms on the patterns because when I don't I do find myself making a dc when it should be a sc.

This is an adorable pattern and it works up quickly. I did make a couple of changes and one change resulted in my first attempt becoming a different project I hope to blog about later.

Notes:

I did not use the tie suggested in the back. Instead I joined the back together. The back is wide enough that you can easily slide the doll in and out of the dress without needing to add a tie. It is just makes it easier for a child to dress the doll.

The biggest change I made was preparing for the skirt. One technique I've picked up this year for adding both skirts and trims which I've really liked is crocheting in the back loops of the row you later will add a skirt or trim. This technique was not used for this pattern and I didn't like the way my skirt looked using the method suggested. This resulted in my using my original attempt for a differnt proect and restarting and rethinking how to create this outfit which would allow for a row with backloops to add the skirt.

I left off a row of the knickers which I then replaced when I added the bodice. This let me use the actual first row of the bodice to crochet the row in back loops to allow me to use the front loops later for my my skirt row. Others may not find this necessary but I found it was much easier to get an even starter row for the skirt all around.

I'm also adding a note to remind myself that the first skirt row and the remiaing skirt rows are different. This doesn't give away the design notes but I didn't read the directions carefully and wondered why my skirt did not look like the one in the picture. Once I followed the directions I got the fuller look I wanted.

I used Bernat Baby Big Ball Sport Yarn and Red Hear Sport for this pattern. I used pale pink instead of white as I had pale pink on hand and I liked the contrast with the dusty pink.