Shortly after my honorary niece Olivia was born in 2016, I came up with the idea of making her a doll and a little wardrobe of outfits and accessories for the doll. I decided to save the idea until she was old enough to really enjoy and appreciate having a doll like that, and I designated four as the ideal age. Olivia turned four in 2020, but I didn't get to the project at all that year. In 2021, when Olivia turned five, I began doing some work on the project, but I didn't get that far. In early September of 2022, when Olivia was nearly six and a half, I began working steadily on the doll project with the idea that Olivia would get it for Christmas that year, but though I spent four months straight working on it, the end of the year found the doll knitted but not assembled, and three of the outfits not quite finished. It wasn't until early summer of 2023 that I finally finished making the doll and her wardrobe of seven outfits, and then in July 2023, I visited my friend Lindsie's home for two days for the first time since October 2019, and gave her seven-year-old daughter the doll and its accompanying accoutrements. I suppose seven isn't such a bad age for such a gift -- Olivia should still have about three doll-enjoying years ahead of her -- and at least the thing finally got done.
All through my doll-making endeavour, I thought of the doll provisionally as "Little Olivia", with the expectation that Olivia would want to name her doll herself. I looked forward to seeing what that name would be, and was gratified when Olivia promptly named her doll... wait for it... Rainbow Sparkle Unicorn-Animals. Lindsie tried unsuccessfully to get Olivia to go with a nice Scottish name, such as Isla, but while that would have been a pretty and suitable name, Olivia's choice is peak seven-year-old girl taste in a way that makes me crack up whenever I think of it. And, now that Miss Unicorn-Animals is finally finished, duly named, and enjoying life with her mommy, let's take a tour through the process of making her and of her completed wardrobe.
When I was in the early stages of planning this project, I kept an eye out for suitable knitted doll patterns and ideas for its wardrobe. I set up a Pinterest board entitled "Little Olivia and Her Wardrobe" to keep track of the cute knitted dolls and doll outfits and other ideas I came across. When it came time to plan more definitely, I searched Ravelry for knitted doll patterns. Its database contained some real cuties, but I soon zeroed in on the "Knit a Teddy" constellation of designs by Sarah Gasson. Gasson has designed an
entire collection of stuffed dolls, bears, cats, bunnies, etc., with numerous outfits designed to fit them all (the stuffed toys are all the same size through the body and the patterns have options for adding tail and ear openings if one is knitting for a stuffed animal). The dolls are darling, with hair that can be styled in multiple ways, and the outfits are amazing, with outfits for every day as well as a number of theme outfits. One can start by knitting
the basic doll and then proceed to make any number of outfits. If you want to make a cheerleader, firefighter, nurse, doctor, paramedic, police officer, soccer, golfing, graduation, elf, fairy, bride, superhero, princess, Christmas, or Halloween outfit, Sarah Gasson has you, or at least the stuffed toy you've made, covered.
Prior to beginning this project, I'd been wanting to make a doll and a wardrobe for it for awhile. Whenever I did my weekly tour of the thrift shops in my neighbourhood, I would often see an array of those "collectable" porcelain dolls (i.e., of the type intended more for display than for playing with) on the shelves among the knickknacks, and I would think about how much fun it would be buy one, take it home, and then research, design, and make some period accurate wardrobe for it as a gift for one of the little girls in my life. And then I would remind myself sternly that I have very limited physical and mental energy due to my chronic fatigue issues, that I'm not making a living, that its costs would add up, that there is so much that needs doing around my house, and that I don't like sewing or knitting in the very small scale at all, and I keep walking. But then the same scenario would play out again the next week.
This particular doll and wardrobe project seemed like an acceptable way to scratch that "I want to make a doll wardrobe" itch. I'd only be working on it in the evening when I don't have the energy to do much else anyway, and it wouldn't take much research, or much money. It would be easy and fun to plan it and come up with little creative touches for it, it wasn't on such a small scale that I would mind working on it, and it would be a good way to use up my boxful of odds and ends of DK yarn.
So, I bought the Sarah Gasson doll pattern, and some of the outfit patterns, and got started.
The above photo is the sample shot from the
Pink Stripy Dress design. I wanted this doll to have some everyday type outfits as well as some theme outfits, and this was one of the first of its everyday outfits.
I wanted the doll, or Rainbow as I suppose I should call her, to look as much like Olivia as possible. Little girls mother their dolls, and they tend to especially like having a doll that looks like them. This doll's facial features being set by the pattern, I could only make the doll look like Olivia by simulating Olivia's colouring. Olivia, who is a strikingly beautiful little girl, has gorgeous long brown curly hair with lots of blond and lighter brown highlights, as well as a slightly reddish tone to it, olive-coloured eyes, and a slight olive tone to her skin. I used two different shades of brown yarn for Rainbow's hair and tried to choose skin and eye colour yarns that were as close to Olivia's colouring as I could get them. The result, while not photo realism accurate, wasn't bad. Lindise commented that the doll really did look like Olivia.
I goofed on the hair by knotting it much too thickly over the back of the doll's head. The pattern called for 50 grams of yarn to be used on the hair, and I used 110 grams of yarn. I suppose it's not such a bad thing for Rainbow to have what we'll call very luxuriant hair, but it's not as easy to style the doll's hair when it's this thick, so if I make another doll like this one, I will not put as much hair on it.
The body of this doll was knitted from a single 100 gram skein of Premier Anti-Pilling Everyday DK in Linen, which I purchased for this project. (I did also make the mistake of ordering 200 grams of another skin tone-like shade of that yarn online that I didn't like at all when it arrived at my house, but that hapless new 200 grams was accounted for when I used up a good chunk of it in the sweater I made Olivia for Christmas last year, so I won't add it to the tally for this one.) For the hair, I used up 40 grams of Sirdar Country Style DK in 530 Chocolate that I had in my stash, and when that proved not to be enough, I bought two 50 gram skeins of Debbie Bliss Rialto DK in 23005 Brown. The eyes were done with a unmeasurably small amount of green yarn of unknown make that I had in my stash, and I used embroidery floss that I had on hand to do the eyelashes and mouth. When the doll was done, I had 25 grams of the new linen yarn and 35 grams of the new brown yarn left, and when I subtract the 40 grams of stash brown I used, I find that this project added 20 just grams of yarn to my stash. Not bad.
This striped dress, bloomers, and shoes outfit was made entirely from stash yarn. I made the dress from spring green and coral yarns, which used up all the coral. I then made the bloomers and the shoes in the same green with cream trim, and to pull the outfit's colour scheme together, I crocheted a cream flower with a green centre, and tacked it to the waistline of the dress.
I forgot to weigh my odds and ends of stash yarn before I began this outfit, but it weighed 120 grams when completed, so that is a stash decrease of -120 grams.
The second "everyday" outfit that I picked out for Rainbow (after some deliberation, because there are so many cute outfits one can hardly choose) was Sarah Gasson's
Flower Pinafore design.
I built this outfit around an unidentifiable skein of dark green yarn that had been sitting in my DK yarn box for years and years. I had some red and some assorted cream yarn that went well with the green, so I went with that.
A shot of the sweater and bloomers by themselves, since the sweater design isn't visible under the pinafore. Fortunately Olivia will be able to mix and match her doll's outfits somewhat.
This outfit was made entirely from stash yarn, and weighed 180 grams when completed, so that's a stash decrease of -180 grams.
Olivia's father's last name is Wallace, he is of Scottish ancestry, and he and his family are quite into their Scottish heritage. They talk about it frequently at family gatherings. I asked Lindsie if they do face-painting and kilt-lifting at their family gatherings as William Wallace's men do in
Braveheart, and she said, "Thankfully, no." Lindsie's father has only gone so far as taking up the bagpipes, and marching in town parades, all kilted up, with whatever little bagpipe regiment he's in.
When I saw the
Highland Dress pattern among Sarah Gasson's collection, I decided it should be one of Rainbow's outfits, because it would be a nice way for Olivia to celebrate her Scottish heritage. It's adorable as is, but when I made it I did end up adding some tweaks.
The first change I made was to the tartan pattern itself. I thought it would be nice to make the doll's kilt, sash, and tam in a Wallace tartan if I could. I googled the Wallace tartan, and found that I could get the kilt's tartan design quite close to the modern dress Wallace tartan you see pictured above by simply changing the colours from red, green, and white, to red, black, and yellow.
I was pleased with my version of the Wallace tartan. Tweak number two was the result of my thinking, wouldn't it be cute if the kilt had a little kilt pin in it? Some online and in person comparison shopping later, I found I couldn't buy a kilt pin of the right size unless I bought a hundred or so of them, so next I looked into the possibility of making a single kilt pin of the right size. In the end, I made one in fifteen minutes using
this very helpful video tutorial.
I haven't worn a kilt since my elementary school uniform days, so I did some more googling on the topic of correct kilt pin placement. From what I understand, a kilt pin is supposed to be worn clasp down on the right side, and two inches from the bottom hem. I adhered faithfully to the first two stipulations, but had to cheat on the "two inches from the bottom" rule because that would have put the kilt pin more than halfway up the kilt.
Tweak number three came about because I didn't have any silver or gray yarn suitable for the buttons, didn't want to buy a whole new skein of it when I needed such a tiny amount, and didn't particularly like look of the crocheted ones anyway. I used some tooled metal buttons from my button tin that I thought were just perfect for the jacket.
Tweaks four and five happened when it occurred to me after I'd made the bow tie that Sarah Gasson's design was the masculine version of traditional highland dress. I did a little googling to find out what the feminine version entailed. Did women even wear sporrans, sashes, and bow ties in traditional highland dress for women? According to my googling results (and I could easily be wrong about any of this!), in traditional highland dress, women don't wear sporrans or bow ties, but they do wear sashes and shawls, and sometimes lace jabots. I nixed the sporran and the bow tie that the pattern called for, made the sash, and cobbled together a lace jabot out of a few scraps of lace I found in my ribbon cannister, using some photos of lace jabots that I found online for reference. I thought the result was, if not up to lace jabot industry standards, pretty decent as a finishing touch on a doll for a seven-year-old.
The finished highland dress outfit. Olivia will be able to take Rainbow along when she goes to see her father play bagpipes in her town's parade, and sit her up at the table when she and her parents are hosting a Wallace family gathering.
When I was visiting Lindsie and we were watching Olivia with her doll, Lindsie asked me which of the seven outfits was my favourite. I said I didn't know if I had a favourite, but that the Scottish outfit was the one I was proudest of. It wasn't until I was writing this post that I realized that I totally forgot to make the flashings for the socks, which is seriously undercutting that sense of pride, sigh. Well, I suppose if it bothers me enough, I can make some, take them with me when I go visit Lindsie in October, and sew them in at that point.
For this outfit, I used some white yarn I had on hand, and I also purchased some skeins of Patons Astra DK in Cardinal, Black, and Maize Yellow. I had 40 grams of the black left, and 10 grams of the yellow. I used up the remaining red in one of the other doll outfits, so I won't count that in my tally for this outfit. But I have no idea how much white yarn I used, because it seems I forgot to weigh it before I started work. I have a note on one of my patterns that says a completed sweater of this type weighed 50 grams, so I think it's safe to say that I would have used at least 60 grams of white to make the shirt and socks for this outfit. I'm going to estimate that this outfit resulted in a net decrease of -10 grams
And we come now to another too-adorable outfit of Sarah Gasson's. This is the
Christmas Jumper design. How freaking cute are those little Timberland-style boots? And this is one of those rare knitting design samples that has such a perfect colour scheme that I just had to replicate it.
My version of the Christmas outfit, with which I am very pleased. For this outfit, I used the remaining red yarn from the Scottish highland dress outfit, and I bought more Patons Astra DK in Cardinal, Navy, and White. For the reindeer face and antlers and the boots I used tan and brown yarns from my stash.
When I was done this ensemble, I found I had used 15 grams of the brown, 10 grams of the tan, and that I had 25 grams of the new red and 5 grams of the new navy left. (Whatever white yarn I had left went into an upcoming outfit.) So, that's a +5 gram stash increase.
This is the Snowflake Gown ensemble from Sarah Gasson's collection. I decided to make this one because one of my nicknames for Olivia is "Princess Olivia of Bolivia". (No, Olivia is not any part Bolivian and yes I am aware that Bolivia is a democratic republic -- I just happen to like the rhyming aspect of it.)
I had to improvise a new colour scheme for Princess Rainbow's outfit out of the offerings at Michaels. I thought a white and a pretty soft second colour would be a nice combination, but they didn't have many options. A lot of the inexpensive acrylic colours are downright crude and ugly. After some traipsing back and forth through their aisles, I bought
Loops & Threads Baby Cuddles in Lilac, and
Loops & Threads Snuggly Wuggly in White. I also used a very small amount of a light green yarn from my stash for the device on the bodice.
The tiara is supposed to be sewn to the doll's head, but I didn't want to do that, as the tiara would definitely not go with all, or for that matter any, of Rainbow's other outfits. Instead, I knitted the tiara twice and stitched it together at the ends, turning it into a crown that could be worn and taken off. I also raided my beading box and found some amethyst chips and some purple stone beads, and sewed them onto the crown. I wish I had found a more artistic arrangement of the gems on the crown, but again, and as I often reminded myself while working on this project, this is just a doll for a little girl, not a PhD level dissertation in costuming.
I used up the white I had left over from this project on my last two projects and I had just 20 grams of the lilac left, so that's a stash increase of +20 grams for this princess outfit.
Almost from the beginning of this project, I had planned to make the doll some sort of nightwear, such as a nightgown and cap, so that Olivia would be able to put her baby properly to bed at night. When I saw this
Onesie pattern in Sarah Gasson's Ravelry store, I knew it had to be one of my selections.
For this pattern I used the white I had bought for some of the outfits you've already seen, and some medium blue, light blue, and old rose I had in my stash, as well as a very small amount of cream yarn and a little dark brown embroidery floss for the detailing on the teddy bear slippers. I had to be a little creative about making the odds and ends of yarn I had picked for this onesie suffice to finish the job. My first attempt at striping this sleeper had me running out of colours so quickly I knew halfway in that I'd never be able to finish, so I ripped out what I had done and began again with a more white-dependent stripe pattern. When it turned out that I didn't have enough of the old rose and light blue left to stripe the sleeves, I made them plain white.
I'm pretty happy with the result, and so was Olivia. When I was visiting Lindsie for those two days, Olivia undressed Rainbow and changed her into her onesie and slippers before carrying her off to bed on both nights, and then she would have her doll dressed for the day in one of her other outfits by the time I came downstairs in the morning. Lindsie told me via email that Olivia has continued to do this since my visit.
For this project I used 15 grams of medium blue, 20 grams of light blue, and 30 grams of old rose, so we'll call that a stash decrease of -65 grams.
This was the last outfit I made. For this one I used the basic sweater, pants, and slippers instructions from my other patterns, and improvised the rest of the design. It was intended to be a sort of Valentine's Day outfit, but it's not so theme-oriented that it doesn't work as just a cute outfit for every day. Again, I had to be a bit creative to make the yarn I had suffice, which is why the pants look a little on the skimpy side. I wish I'd made the last few rows of knitting on the slippers in rib instead of garter, as it would have made their fit more secure.
For this outfit I used the last of the white I bought for the other doll outfits, and (at a guess, because I don't seem to have documented this) 45 grams of blue yarn and 15 grams of burgundy yarn from my stash. I had nothing but a handful of scraps of the three colours left when I finished, so that's a -60 gram stash decrease.
Another idea that occurred to me early on in the project planning phase was that Olivia would need a place to keep all of her doll's clothing and belongings. My first thought was that I would get her a little wooden box, and paint and decorate it in such a way that she could still enjoy using the box after she'd outgrown the doll. I kept an eye out for a suitable box when doing my weekly thrift shop tour, and eventually bought one. But once I began working on the doll's wardrobe, it soon became clear that the box was far too small for such a purpose, so much so that I don't understand how I ever could have thought it would be adequate. (I stowed the box in a drawer in the attic for a few years, with the idea that I would be using it for some other project, and I have indeed come up with a good use for it, which I'll be posting about by the end of this year.)
With the box idea ruled out, my next thought was that I would make Olivia a tote bag for her doll's things, which was an even better idea than a box because she could carry it around with her. And I knew immediately what fabric I wanted to use for it. Back in 2021, I had made Olivia a quilt, and when I went fabric shopping for that project, my first choice of fabric was the one you see depicted above. I thought those interlocking Os in an olive green colour made it the perfect fabric quilt for her. To my disappointment, there wasn't enough of the fabric left on the bolt for the quilt. I did find another pretty fabric for the quilt that I was happy with, but that disappointment was clearly still lurking in my mind, because when I came up with the idea for a tote bag, I was so glad that I had a chance to use that perfect first fabric for something else for Olivia. Back to the fabric warehouse place I went, and I dug around determinedly until I found the interlocking Os fabric.
And here is Rainbow Sparkle Unicorn-Animals, with all of her things packed and ready to go to meet her mommy for the first time. I put each of the outfits in a separate zippered plastic bag so that Olivia would know what items goes with what other items, although I don't expect they'll stay that way.
This was a decent stash-busting project. Let's review the numbers:
- doll +20 grams
- striped dress outfit -120 grams
- pinafore outfit -180 grams
- Scottish outfit -10 grams
- Christmas outfit +5 grams
- princess outfit +20 grams
- onesie and slippers -65 grams
- Valentine's Day outfit -60 grams
According to my math, that's 390 gram stash decrease. Not bad at all, and I definitely saw the difference in my DK stash box, with a number of odds and ends that had been sitting there for years finally used up.
This was a seriously time intensive project on a scale I will almost certainly never attempt again. I think this project must have taken a total of six months of my knitting time. Admittedly, I am toying with the idea of making my grandniece Holly a doll like Rainbow in a few years, but she'll only get two or three outfits with it, not seven, and then maybe I'll make her one outfit a year to add to her collection until she's ten or so. And... I will be making Olivia more outfits for Rainbow, but again, it'll be just one a year, and only for a few more years. I also no longer pine over the porcelain dolls I see in thrift stores, so I consider that itch to be successfully scratched.
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