My Life Youthful Memories

This has been a wonderful busy year and I'm trying to make sure that despite some great things coming into my life I don't forget those in need. The doll donation may not end world hunger but joy is a precious gift in our world. Providing something unexpected to children at Christmas is something I've enjoyed doing for some time now.

I mentioned in my previous doll post this week that last year we organized all Darski's doll pattern links on Crochetville and I printed out the ones I hadn't previously downloaded. I also put together a binder of her 18 inch doll patterns so I could find them when I wanted them, rather than hunting through several binders of patterns to find hers. This summer as I return to making doll clothes again I've turned to an old friend's binder to find inspiration for the journey. Her patterns are so creative that I've found myself back into the groove of creating doll clothes and still working on shawls.

This free pattern is Youthful Memories and you can find it here.

This was another one I thought I'd made but while similiar to some of her other patterns I've never made this one before. This is a delightful outfit and it works up fairly quickly. This was another chance to use up left over yarn from previous projects.

Notes:

I used a hairband for the elastic waist. I've continued to need an I hook for her patterns this year.

My Life Dress Hat and Shoes

This pattern appears yearly for a reason it works up quickly and it adapts to most of the larger sized dolls without much effort.

The dress pattern is a free pattern found here. The shoes are part of a paid Sailor Dress pattern, found here, that has become my go to shoe pattern for the 18 inch dolls as they work up easily and they stay on the doll. Every year I experiment with creating a hat pattern I'd want to keep and record the pattern for future purposes but I've yet to discover my final hat so I keep playing around with my options.

This year I restocked my striped/variageted yarn collection and picked the Tuity Fruity Red Heart Stripes yarn the pattern suggests. I'll use other colors for the remainder of the dolls this pattern fits but I do like the original when I can get the yarn.

I used an H hook for all items.

My Life Swim Suit

I'm still working on my project to send all the donation dolls off with swim wear.

What I have come to realize is only Barbie has more options for swim suits in my pattern library than the 18 inch dolls. Over the years I've acquired various pattern sets with swim wear for the 18 inch dolls. This is part of the three pattern set you can purchase from Adoring Doll Clothes here. The patterns are also available for individual purchase should you only want some of the dolls. I decided to complete the set this year and this is the last of the patterns. I'll be using different patterns for the other My Life and Our Generation female doll.

As a note to myself I ended up with a K hook for the waist portion of this outfit. However since this was a left over yarn ball I started doing some research about its origins and realized it is a lighter worsted weight 4 yarn closer to a 3 1/2 than a traditional 4 and that could have made it an issue with why the outfit was tight with what I would normally have moved up to which would have been an I over the suggested G hook. I have weird guage but I've pretty much come to know she suggests G and I use I. It was weird to have to use such a large hook so the lighter yarn would be a good explanation.

I had never done the neck ties this way and I liked the design. I would try this again with the suggested weight yarn.