Knit an Adorable Doll Sweater

Little girls (well, any kids who like to play with dolls, actually) love to have different clothes to put their favorite dolls in and to allow the dolls to change their clothes almost as often as they do. Just like it’s fun to outfit the children in our lives with handmade things, making doll clothes can be really fun, too.

Classic Elite is offering a free pattern for a doll sweater that’s super cute. The Fiona Doll Hoodie is worked in their lovely Liberty Wool, which is superwash, making it perfect for kids and dolls alike (a bigger version of the sweater for small humans is available in the Liberty Wool Kids pattern booklet or as an individual PDF download).

It’s knit from the bottom up, mostly in reverse stockinette stitch, which nicely breaks up the colors of the self-striping yarn used in the sample. This would be a great little project to try seamless knitting techniques if you’ve never worked a sweater like this before (the sleeves and knit separately and joined to the body at the yoke).

[Photo via Classic Elite Yarns.]

For the past few years I’ve taken part in a Christmas in July blog hop that encourages people to get a jump on their making for holiday gifts.

I love to use yarn I already have for these projects in the hope that people will consider what they already have that they can use to make projects for themselves or to give as gifts.

This year it was a couple of knit baskets made using partial balls of yarn left in my stash from other projects.

They use the same basic pattern but the first one is made with two colors of bulky yarn, and the second used two strands of worsted weight yarn held together, which made the gauge about the same, but I cast on fewer stitches to make a smaller version.

The bottom of the basket is square, though you can make them rectangular if you’d rather. Then I just knit up the sides in rounds until I was about to run out of yarn. This gave both baskets rather short sides — maybe more like a tray than a basket — but you can keep knitting as long as you like to make the sides of your basket as tall as you want.

They’re worked in seed stitch, which keeps the edges from curling and adds a nice texture to the baskets.

Of course this also allows you to use even more odd balls from your stash. I’d love to make a big one someday combining lots of different yarn. I mean, I’d probably use it to store more yarn, but that’s a fine thing to do.

As it is, these little trays are great for sitting on your desk or bedside table to hold little things that always seem to appear there. I like to use one to hold the supplies for whatever project I’m working on, things like little scissors, my tape measure, a crochet hook, etc.

And they would make good gifts on their own or as a container to hold some other goodies if you like.

You can find the free pattern for these stash busting baskets over at Our Daily Craft.

Have you read?