4.1.16

Tiny Knitting and a Makeover

Welcome to 2016! This year feels like fresh new start and fresh starts is what this blog post is about!

When I was about ten I visited my grandparents in Minneapolis. My grandma took me to a toy store where we found a beautiful doll. She was the only one of her kind, wearing a hot pink dress with small white buttons and a white collar. Plus that hair! She was mine!!!

This fall I helped my dad with a yard sale and in the bottom of a box of toys I found her, minus her pink dress and a lot of messy hair. She was on the table for sale, but alas nobody wanted her. She was looking a little sad wearing an over sized pinafore, and a layer of dirt on her face and clothes. Instead of sending her off to Goodwill I decided to keep her and give her a makeover. Such good memories that she surely was deserving of a new look.

She's had a bath, her hair was dunked in fabric softener to tame it (although I think it needs to be rinsed out a bit more) and that sad pinafore is now clean. Next up some new clothes that fit!

While rooting through the library at the Textile Center I came upon some vintage knitting patterns for dolls and decided a sweater was just the thing to begin the new look. After reading through the patterns none of them were quite the right size or style. Elizabeth Zimmerman's bottom up sweater design (for more info go here) seemed like the right way to go. I knit a swatch, took her measurements and kind of make up some of it as I went. It looks pretty good, although for a human it might be a little tight under the arms. This dolly won't complain because it's way better than that silly smock. Next pants, skirt, dress? I'm not quite sure. Actually maybe some undies!


If you are interested in dolls, she has some markings on the back of her neck and I looked them up. She was made in Italy in 1967 by Italocremona a company no longer in business.