Teddy Bear Hot Pad

I mentioned in the Barbie Fashion Doll Thrills post that I'd picked up a bunch of old crochet magazine patterns that were on sale at a vintage pattern site. One of the upsides of buying the whole magazine is occasionally I'm surprised by a project I hadn't noticed when I selected the magazine. In this case it was a Teddy Bear Potholder or in my case Hot Pad as I find these work great to set things on, not so great to try to pick things up with when they are hot.

This is a Michelle Wilcox pattern found in Annie's Quick and Easy Pattern Club April-May 1991 magazine. I used cotton dishcloth yarn for my project and followed the suggested hook sizes. I prefer cotton when I'm going to use heat on my projects. The downside to this is dishcloth cotton has more limited color selections. I would have preferred a lighter color as shown in the magazine for the baby bear. However, finding any brown locally has been challenging over the years. SO I used what I had on hand.

I used sport cotton for the eyes and Baby Bear's paw pads. I tried his paw pads with the pink dish cloth yarn and it was too heavy.

This will make for a nice summer hot pad. I have a few I can use for Memorial Day and July 4th but it is nice to have some summer fun themed ones as well.

Barbie Fashion Doll Thrills

One of the vintage crochet pattern sites I frequent was having a sale on crochet magazines recently and I looked searched the offerings to see if any had fashion doll patterns. I was able to pick up some new offerings for my Barbie binders.

This pattern comes from Annie's Quick and Easy Pattern Club April/May 1991 Magazine. The original pattern used a variegated purple size 10 thread that I couldn't match. If I do find something similiar I'd pick it up for another donation doll as the shading was quite pretty. Since I resumed working with thread I've been picking up a variety of solid and variegated thread colors and weights to use for toy and doll projects. For this project I pulled Aunt Lydia's Size 10 Crochet Thread, Monet Multi from my stash. While it isn't purple I think it makes a nice substitute color pattern.

As I mentioned with the previous Barbie pattern steel hook sizes listed in older fashion doll patterns don't always match your current steel hooks so it is best to try the outfits on as you make them. Barbie sizes have also not stayed the same over the years so this too can be a factor as you work with older patterns. Trying on and adusting as you go can help work through these challenges. This pattern called for a size 7 steel hook. I used a Tulip Steel Crochet Hook-Size 4/1.25mm for all but one row of this project. For the first row of the bodice I used the Tulip Etimo Steel Crochet Hook-Size 0/1.75mm to increase the size of the waist as it was just a little tighter than I'd hoped. I'd previously started the project with this hook but the dress was too large. It can be a bit of a Goldilocks situation sometimes when working with these patterns to find just the right fit.

Notes:

I added two rows of sc finish to the back to create a better place to add snaps and to make the back close better on the dress. Not part of the directions but it made the dress fit better. Note for hat make sure you add the chain 1 after the shell. This is different from skirt pattern and easy to forget.