Bell Ornaments

These bell ornaments were made from a free pattern from Saturday Breakfast you can find here. The pattern includes a crochet clapper, I chose to use jingle bells as I knew the small kids in the family would enjoy the ornaments making noise. Either option works.

I add little chains to the top of my ornaments so people can use metal hangers if they wish or add string hangers as they choose. I tend to use metal hangers so I like to give people options. This pattern calls for Aran yarn and a G hook. I found this to be large. I went with sport cotton and a D hook.

Lil Cutesies Peach Romper Christmas Gift

When it was time to make the second Romper outfit for the Lil Cutesies Baby Doll Christmas gift I went looking in my baby yarn stash for an alternate color to Bernat Baby Big Ball Sport Yarn, Baby Yellow. I settled on Bernat Baby Big Ball Sport Yarn, Peach Blossom since I had it on hand and it seemed like it would be a good match with the yellow size 10 thread I had.

This is a Shady Lane pattern you can purchase the digital version here or a print copy here. As I've previously mentioned I follow the suggested hook size for the dress and shoes but use a D hook for the headband. This flower would work well with the purple dress I wrote about on Monday. I works up quickly and is an option for the dress when I make it for the donation next year.

Bear Ornaments

We always had kid friendly or what my Mom optimistically called unbreakable ornaments for our Christmas tree. These were ornaments my siblings and I were less likely to break in our excitement to "help" with decorating the tree. To honor that tradition over the years I've tried to make ornaments for people with young kids so they too have their own "unbreakable" ornaments to put on the tree.

This year I stumbled on a free ornament bear pattern you can find here. As you might notice from my first attempt my bear was rather large for an ornament. I had used worsted weight yarn and a g hook not the 6mm hook suggested but my first bear became an office decoration for DH's home office. Always glad to provide him with some holiday cheer but that wasn't really the goal of the project and as always with the holidays if I don't make the ornaments in the summer I'm pushing a deadline for Christmas.

I headed to my stash and pulled out some Hobby Lobby sport weight yarn with colors I could alternate for the sweater and shifted to a D hook to get the size I wanted for an ornament. To avoid getting the ornament tangled in the tree I also decided to not add legs. I thought they made cute ball ornaments.

I also changed the pattern by using both saftey eyes and noses. I hoped they'd wear better over time.

The house boxes make for a fun holiday village for kids. Not unbreakable as cardboard is easily destroyed. However far less dangerous when destroyed than the ceramic houses so popular this time of year. I find my gift boxes at Dollar Tree. They make great play villages after the gifts are opened.

Lil Cutesies Purple Dress, Knickers, Hat and Shoes

I took time off around Christmas to take care of all the wonderful and busy tasks that come with the holiday. I've since updated the pictures on the Christmas post as I use these posts to remind myself of projects I've made in previous years. I come back and post about the projects because the pictures merely show what I made they don't describe anything I might want to remember about the project.

I gave 2 Lil Cutesies Baby Dolls as Christmas gifts and then made clothes to send with them. I was able to post about some of them before Christmas but I want to finish posting the outfits so I'll have my notes for the donation projects next year.

This is a UK pattern from Petite Dolls that you can purchase here.

I've been getting better about reading patterns with UK terms but I did make notes at the top of each page to remind myself of the US translations as some of the terms were not the standard UK DC to US sc and that made the pattern easier to follow. I didn't need to write the terms above each direction as I used to but I found trying to work without any hints was less than succesful.

The pattern calls for 4 ply yarn I used baby yarn for this pattern and the fit was fine with an e hook. While this pattern shows a flower on the hat there is not a pattern. I have at least 2 patterns for flowers and hopefully next year when I tackle this pattern for the donation I will add one. I was on a fairly tight deadline to finish these for Christmas so I chose to finish and keep moving with these final outfits for the holiday.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all who visit here as I revisit my 2021 Christmas projects.

Lil Cutesies Dress with Shorts

This was my Thanksgiving Day project. You can purchase the pattern here.

Notes:

I used an e hook and no longer available Blue Red Heart Sport Yarn and Bernat Baby Sport Big Ball Yarn, Ombres, Baby Baby.

Other than adding a few extra chains for the shoe strap I followed the pattern as written.

Lil Cutesies Dress

I love the way color can change the look of a pattern. I made this outfit for the 2021 Lil Cutesies Doll doll donation mirroring the colors in the pattern you can purchase here. Changing the yarn to green gave the dress a different look.

I used a B hook for this pattern.

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.

Also, I'm still working out the bulkiness of the knickers. I haven't quite mastered this challenge yet. I like that they attach to the skirt, but I'm still struggling with the problem that both times I've made this the knickers are bulky. I'm thinking leaving out some crotch stiches might be a solution.

As far as color choices go for making this in the future I rather like this color combo. A reminder to myself the top color is also the knickers color. Just something for me to remember when consider how much yarn I have available for a project. Sometimes I think I can finish a project with a small ball but in this case it is not just a small trim but a larger part of the project.

Lil Cutesies Green Christmas Footed Pajamas

I'm working through my duplicate set of Lil Cutesies outfits hoping to have complete sets for both girls altering the colors to keep me sane while making them.

As I mentioned previously while this is one of Darski's free patterns it is not available at Crochetville you will need to join her io group here to have access to the pattern here.

I used Red Heart Super Saver Yarn, Paddy Green, Hot Red,and White for this project.

I alternated the order from the previous project and if I'm making only one in the future I'd go with green for both projects as the primary color.

I used an I hook for the top and the bottom and buttons to close the shirt.

Lil Cutesies Green Christmas Dress

I'm trying to keep this Christmas project even so each child gets the same dresses for the Lil Cutesies dolls. To help them tell the outfits apart I've chosen different colors for the same patterns.

The outfit is made with the same colors as the first,Red Heart Super Saver Yarn, Paddy Green, Hot Red,and White. I just reversed the order of the colors to get a different look. For my own notes if I make this again I'd stick with the green on top. I like the look better.

The shoes are made with Shady Lane's Gingham Tote Pattern found here and I used now unavailable Red Heart Sport Yarn.

I didn't mention this in my previous post but while I used an I hook for the dress I used a J hook for the panties as they were a bit tight otherwise.

As I mentioned in my previous post this pattern is available on Darski's IO group here, not on Crochetville where I generally send you for her patterns.