Our 3 year old granddaughter is crazy about dolly babies. She has all sorts of them and loves to play with each of them. I recently made her a crochet doll cradle that will hold a small doll. I also hunted around the internet and found an adorable little knitted dolly that will also fit in the cradle. The pattern I found hardly uses any yarn and knits up very quickly. You need 3 mm or 3.25 mm needles, small amounts of some double knitting yarn and some washable stuffing. I used Bernat Baby yarn in pink, white and blue. I also used some contrasting embroidery thread to make a little scarf and stitch on the facial features.
The doll body is knitted all in one piece. The rest of the pictures show the finished pink dolly, but for some reason I forgot to take a photo of that one in progress. The blue dolly is still a WIP (work in progress). You seam up the legs and then the back and gently stuff the dolly. The hat and arms are knitted separated and stitched on once the dolly is stuffed.
Here is the finished pink one which measures about 20 cm. or 8 inches in length. The pattern can be found at this site, where there are all sorts of cute little things to knit. There are pdf patterns to download for each item. For the dolly, just scroll down to the bottom of the page. I added a pom pom to the hat for the pink dolly but did follow the pattern for the blue dolly.
The knitted dolly works up very quickly and I’ll be making more of them using up some of the different colours of yarn I’ve got left over. I’m thinking of using some sock yarn so the body has a striped pattern to it.
I also made a crochet cradle as well. You can search cradle purse and find several different links. The pattern I used was shared on the Knitting Paradise forum and was written by one of the members. The dolly fits nicely into the cradle, and the edges fold up, you pull the cord and have a little purse to take your dolly out in.
