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Thursday 29 March 2012

Florence in her spring outfit

I've been knitting and sewing recently for Florence.  A couple of weeks ago my local wool shop yielded the wool which was used by Petrana for those socks I won (Wendy Happy 2511 Saggitarius) and I downloaded the raglan cardigan pattern from Ravelry (by Lauri Bolland).  The cardigan took a week of evenings to make - it is knitted from the neck down, with no seams up the arms or down the sides and I really like the pattern - it works very well.  The wool has an eventual repeat amongst the shades, but having knitting the body and picking up the stitches for knitting the sleeves in the round I realised that the repeat would need to be adjusted by shortening the different shades of wool at various points because there weren't as many stitches in a sleeve as across the body.  So ultimately this was the only sewing I had to do - sewing in the restarted threads.  My daughters were in raptures about the cardigan - the wool is lovely and silky soft to knit and the pattern and colours are amazing.  I have knitted an 'Alice' band for her hair to match the cardigan.

At the weekend I cut out the pattern pieces for sewing my first Sasha dress.  This was from 'Grandmas Patterns for Sasha - 3 pretty dresses' and I chose the drop waist dress with a full gathered skirt.  The material was a remnant I had found some months ago at John Lewis (I love rummaging through the remnants box) and is a lovely fine flower print, perfect scale for dolls clothes.  At the same time I cut out another dress from the same set of patterns for my Palitoy Susie - her body size is very similar in slimness to Sasha though her upper arms are a little wider.  I've finished the dress for Florence first and this evening she modelled her new clothes in the garden with the spring flowers.  She is wearing new black boots made by Lisa Hartley (who re-rooted Susie's hair 3 years ago).

Florence enjoying the evening Spring sunshine

Florence wearing her new dress, cardigan and hair band

Florence in her new spring dress

Look how the pattern matches on my cardigan

I must go and sew for Susie - she needs her spring dress.

9 comments:

Serenata said...

Gorgeous colourway in that cardigan, it is a nice pattern isn't it? I have used it as well.

The dress is very pretty, she looks pleased with her new spring outfit.

Hannah Prewett (beastsbelle) said...

Just adorable! :)

AuntLou said...

What a lovely sweater! (At least 6 generations away from England, I know what a cardigan is, but I resort to Yankee vernacular.) I like your work, your doll & your pictures. :)

DollMum said...

Isn't it funny the different names we use to describe things: in England/Wales it is a cardigan, in the USA it is a sweater. I think of a sweater as a knitted pullover top with no opening down the front, but I also call that a jumper, yet in the USA a jumper is a dress with straps which goes over a shirt, what I call a pinafore.

Wikipedia uses sweater as a 'catch-all' for sweater, jumper, cardigan, though does make the distinction between front opening (cardigan) and pullover (no front opening). And it does have a separate entry for 'jumper' where it also mentions the jumper dress.

As for the colourway in the wool - I'm tempted to go and buy some of the other balls of wool in the Happy series, though this was the one I liked the best.

Mikki said...

The whole outfit is absolutely beautiful and really suits her

Unknown said...

Hello from Spain: congratulations on the new clothes of Florence. The jacket fits very well with the color of the dress. Some pictures very spring. keep in touch.

Papillon Bleu said...

Love the colour combination.

Hope you are well.
x

Carolyn said...

Very lovely! Love all the colors.

Minnie Kitchen said...

Looks beautiful on her!