Little Backpacks

A few months ago, my daughter (the middle one) asked me to make her a little doll-size backpack. She drew me a picture to explain her specifications.

It took me a while to get to this project but she persevered all along, reminding me of the promise that I would make it "some day, soon". Impressed by her tenacity,  I finally made the four-inch backpacks. Notice the plural, as her youger sister has to have everything that she has. Also, I made three as the prototype needed a few improvements.

Here are all three backpacks, complete with zippers, glue on pearls and all. The green prototype was gifted to a friend while my girls claimed the other two.

By the time of this post, it has been several weeks since the completion of the backpacks and the girls have moved onto newer toys. But they had a good run and are still intact, just hibernating for now. 

Scrappy Doll

I stumbled across this cute pattern at ravelry and was tempted to knit it, as it seemed to be a quick, easy knit, I had just the right scrap wool for the project and I wanted to reacquaint myself with felting.

The pattern instructions were excellent, except for the head size which was quite large compared to the torso. So, I had to decapitate the doll and re-knit the head from the neck up, making the neck thinner (18sts instead of 24) and less increases for the head (48 sts instead of 60).

  The doll itself takes little time to knit (I did it in a day) but the felting, drying, stuffing and the making up took a lot longer. I stayed up well into the night, the second day to do the face and hair. Instead of the leggings I opted for shorts and changed color at feet to make shoes. Then I embroidered the shoes with white yarn to make Mary Janes and knit some frilly socks.

Next, the doll needed some clothes and by this time, I was pushing to get it done. Thus came into being this little blue dress with a crochet heart and edging.

 Here is the doll finally done and dressed.

  It was surprisingly well received by my daughter whose tastes in toys go after her elder borher and she can not be bothered with dolls as a rule. But she was enamored enough to take it to bed with her last night.Not so surprising, was the envious reaction of my son, who has supplied me with various sketches for the Lego superheroes for me to knit and has extracted a promise from me to see if I can knit those too. Sigh, a scrappy doll is not so simple a knit after all.

Doll Fashion Recalled

Once upon a time, before Allah had blessed me with two human dolls to dress and play with (and feed and clean and carry everywhere ofcourse!), I used to make dresses for dolls. I had been thinking of them lately and finally dug them out from their storage place and did a fashion shoot.

First, all the knitted and crocheted dresses. As I remember, all were free patterns downloaded from the net, however I no longer have the links.

Lastly, a traditional wedding dress I sew for a fashion doll: