Freebie Friday – Crochet Heart for Purplicious Doll

Purplicious is done. She is fully assembled and more importantly, clothed.

I’m ready for my debut!

Once finished, it surprised me that some family members thought she looked like my daughter. First thing out of hubby’s mouth was, “She looks like Daughter.” On a different day my sister said, “She looks like Niece.” Why? Because she’s purple? Daughter’s favorite color is purple. My favorite color is purple. No one thinks she looks like me. They both said the doll just does. Works for me. 🙂

I look like Daughter!

I didn’t write down what I did when I made this doll but I do have the pattern I did write down for Mini Me. This doll is a little smaller but the idea is the same. The pattern for Mini Me could easily be made smaller by doing less increase rounds and adjusting the decrease rounds to match. The hands are a little different on this doll because I added fingers.

I do have the pattern (not mine) for the hearts I used to make her dress. I wanted to incorporate hearts into the outfit so I searched the internet and waded through thousands of hearts (okay, maybe ten). Victory! I found this one. It is so pretty, I had to try it. The picture below shows the hearts I made using the video I found on YouTube.

Freebie Friday!

Her outfit

It took me a little longer to get her outfit done because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I wanted to try something new for me. I didn’t realize at first, but her outfit was definitely inspired by recent work on the granny square sweater. It opened me up to the possibility of sewing motif pieces together versus working the dress in one or two pieces.

Once I made one heart, I knew I would need a total of four. Next, I had to figure out the best way to put them together. In my head it was so simple, I just had to sew them together and I would get a lovely skirt. In practice, not so much! I couldn’t just sew up the sides. That would leave no opening for the waist. I had to determine how much to sew and how to deal with the gaps that resulted from the sewing. I ended up leaving four stitches near the point unworked. Then, I attached yarn to one of the points, worked a single crochet in the bottom three stitches of the point, chained three and single crocheted the next three stitches of the bottom point of the next heart.

Looked like this after sewing the edges together and crocheting around the points.

I had to decide if I was done or if I was going to try to fill in that visible gap at the bottom points of the hearts. I went back and forth on that but eventually couldn’t live with the gaps.

Close-up of the gap.

I made four plugs and sewed them into the gaps.

These worked up quickly and didn’t take long to sew them in.

That’s one down!

Once the skirt was done,  I looked at all the purply goodness of the doll and didn’t like the purple color I used on the legs anymore. It WAS a shade of purple but next to the other purples on the doll, it looked more like a berry and out of place. I couldn’t decide if I could live with it or if I needed to change something. It kept bothering me. I could rip the legs off and use a better purple for the stripes but that seemed so drastic (plus I didn’t have that much of the light purple I used for the skin tone). I could make her some sort of leggings that would hide the stripes but that would make her legs very chunky. I slept on it and opted to make her top match her legs. I wasn’t sure this would work out but I gave it a shot. I made a simple rectangle of single crochet that went around her torso. I wanted to keep the heart theme going so I embroidered a V and filled it in a little. I made two shells in that V space at top of the shirt to resemble a heart. I added a chain strap around her head, sewed up the back of the top and the outfit was done. Or was it? I couldn’t leave the skirt alone. I had to edge it! I used that deep, dark purple for the waist and plugs and felt I needed more of that, plus I felt the skirt needed a unifying color at the bottom. I was worried the colors wouldn’t complement each other but I loved it. I think the colors pulled together well.

I’m very pleased with her and she makes a great little model. 🙂

Now I’m thinking of making a doll rainbow. I’m sure I have 50 shades of red (and green and orange and blue and red and yellow) yarn around here somewhere…