My Daughter’s American Girl Doll Needed A New Crocheted Ballet Shrug

Felicity's New Ballet Shrug

For a while I have been toying with the idea of creating some crocheted American Girl doll clothing patterns, especially since my oldest daughter has a Felicity doll as well as another 18 inch doll.  As I generally do when I decide to crochet something entirely new, I decided to start with something fairly simple and made a crocheted ballet shrug with some sport weight acrylic yarn I had leftover from a custom order alphabet letter project.

The first challenge was making the shrug fitted, without it being too hard to get over the doll’s fingers.  Just like a baby, a doll is not very helpful when you try to put clothing on it.  I ended up having to add a stitch and frogged about ten rows to start over.

Keeping count of rows was a bit of a challenge as well.  I would definitely recommend using your row counter while making this.  For some reason I thought that the fact that I was writing down the pattern as I went would help me keep track of rows.  (Of course, being interrupted by children while working probably contributed to losing track of where I was.)

Hopefully I will get a chance to type up this pattern in the evening (when no children are awake to interrupt me.)  Once I do I hope to find a pattern tester who would be willing to do a quick test of this pattern for me.  After that you will be able to find this pattern on Ravelry and through my blog as a free download.

Back View of Crocheted Ballet Shrug

If you have other suggestions for crochet patterns for American Girl dolls, please let me know.  I am taking requests from my daughter and have a few ideas of my own.  I am also offering handmade American Girl doll clothing in my Artfire studio.
Pattern now available as free download from Ravelry: download now

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Alphabet Letter Pattern Countdown

Newest Letter Pattern

In March I somehow thought I would get through all the letter patterns and finish them up, but then I forgot about the fact that I would be going to visit my dad with my two girls during Spring Break, which would take away quite a bit of photographing and computer time. I am now setting my goal to finish up the patterns by Mother’s Day since the project tote I want has a special sale until then and I promised myself a reward once I finish these.

Capital W photo courtesy of my new Canon Rebel

Today I managed to list the lowercase j as well as get the Capital W off for testing. I am down to seven patterns now: Q, q, U, w, x, Z, and z. I already have the U, x, Z, and z handwritten, so hopefully I can meet my goal. Once I do I need to figure out the ebook listing on Ravelry so I can offer a special deal for purchasing the whole set there as well as in my other shops.

I will also be experimenting with making a zip file for the entire set. My husband tells me that opening a zip file should not be too difficult for those who have Windows based computers. I will probably also offer the option of having me send the files in separate pdf files, but that will probably end up having to be several emails due to size limits of attachments. If you would have a preference when purchasing between one zip file and several emails with multiple pdfs, please let me know in the comments.

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Another Preschool Birthday Party, Another Crocheted Amigurumi

Since my youngest had yet another birthday party to attend today and we have no birthday party present budget, I got busy searching Ravelry for a free pattern that I could use to make something quick and cute for the present. I was tired of making cats since I have made at least three lately as gifts, so I searched around for a bit and found this cute doll, which originally had bunny ears and a basket.

I used scrap yarn that I had on hand. For the hair, I put the hair on and then unraveled each yarn strand into its separate plies to make it look more like hair. I thought the worsted weight yarn looked too thick to be the doll’s hair. I also did not use safety eyes. Instead, I had some Lustersheen scraps. I made a single crochet and then finished it off and attached it to the doll.

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Working on Lovely Little Letter Patterns

I have been working hard on my Lovely Little Letter patterns lately. In the past several days I have been creating the patterns for a capital J, capital I, capital L, lowercase t, and lowercase o. Hopefully I will have the patterns available soon; I have a few great testers working on some patterns for me right now.

Most of these patterns are fairly simple to follow, but I want to have a tester make sure I did not put any incorrect numbers while typing them up.

For the letters like the lowercase o, I needed to take photos of each step to make sure that my pattern was very clear.

I added my capital I as a free download on Ravelry for those who want to try out a Lovely Little Letter without a commitment of money. Once you see the general idea and size, then you can check out more letters. If there is a letter I have not gotten to yet and you are interested in being a tester, please let me know.

Here is the download link for the capital I:
download now
Be sure to check out my pattern page to see which letter patterns and other patterns are available now.

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More Cute Tawashi Scrubbies (and their patterns) On The Way

Since adding a poll about what patterns crocheters are searching for when they arrive at my blog, I found that many people are interested in more tawashi scrubbie patterns. On my blog I already have the flower tawashi. I currently have two other tawashi patterns available to purchase on Artfire, Ravelry, and Etsy. I hope to get one more listed this week.

The fish tawashi were inspired by my husband, who suggested something larger than the flowers since he would like larger ones to use in the bath with the girls. The ones pictured were inspired by a Dr. Seuss book.

The turtle tawashi were partly inspired by some cotton yarn I had picked up and then set aside without a plan. It is sometimes hard to figure out the best way to work with yarn that changes color, but I like the turtle shell having the mottled, natural look. I also like that the loop for hanging is also the turtle’s tail.

I am in the home stretch of getting the pattern for the ladybug ready. This one is a little different in that I think that you would probably just use the nylon side for washing. The cotton side might be a bit bumpy with the spots. I have not tested one in the kitchen or bath yet to see.

Just a note, if you want to use these for your kitchen, you might consider acrylic yarn. I thought I should always use cotton, but then someone suggested acrylic and I found that the acrylic dries faster and sometimes does a better job scrubbing. So, right now I have three acrylic and nylon flower scrubbies for my kitchen and use the cotton and nylon for baths.

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A Fine Catch and other crochet patterns in the works…

Red Fish, Blue Fish Tawashi

I made a few sets of these tawashi a while back for a friend as well as having a set or two in my Etsy shop. Then I got into other projects and kind of forgot about them. I discovered my pattern (if you can call the chicken scratch I wrote on a couple post it notes a pattern) while cleaning my corner next to my spot on the couch. I decided to pick up the cotton yarn and nylon tulle in attempt to use some more of my stash.

Since I have been trying to add some patterns to my Etsy and Ravelry shops, I decided to make my chicken scratch into something anyone who crochets and reads patterns could understand. That meant typing up the pattern in my word processing program, adding some photos, and then making another tawashi following my printed out pattern. That resulted in my finding a few mistakes that had to be edited before handing off the pattern to be tested by someone else. Once the pattern has been checked again, I usually look over it one more time, just to be sure. I would hate for someone to email me when the pattern would not work because I forgot a comma or typed in the wrong number somewhere.

A Fine Catch
Right now I have a couple more patterns out being tested, a couple more mostly put into the computer, and about a dozen in chicken scratch form. I am trying to balance the progress I make in getting the patterns ready with the rest of my obligations so that I don’t feel totally overwhelmed or stressed about it.

If you have a chance, please vote in my poll at the top of the sidebar so I have some idea what kind of patterns you might be interested in using in the future. I am working my way through the alphabet right now and hope to play around with items for my daughter’s new American Girl doll. I am not sure how quickly I will get to that, but if I see there is a bunch of interest I may take a break with letters and do something new.

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