Dressing up Barbie

Christmas is coming (I'll pause to allow those who have not realised it yet to gasp in shock) and that means finding presents for my family.  Today's post covers the present for my three year old niece who can't read or search the internet yet, thus making it safe for me to post about.

Given that my knitting addiction shows no signs of abating I thought I'd make some more clothes for Barbie.  Partly to feed my crafting addiction and partly because it seems hard to even find clothes in the shops- it is a tad excessive to need to buy a whole new doll every time you want to get a new costume!

So I searched Ravelry and found a magnificent site for knitting Barbie patterns: Sticka till Barbie.  There are hundreds of different patterns there!  Using some left over sock yarn I had, I quickly whipped up a little coat and a little hat (#88 and #A40 respectively if you are looking for the pattern).
  

Then yesterday I was prowling in a little local craft shop that I had not visited before and found some lovely sparkly fingering yarn (Peter Pan Washable Goldfingering).  It was just cheap enough that I found myself justifying my purchase.  I ended up choosing pattern #984, Green Long Gown to make.

Due to the amount of yarn I had though (about 100m on the ball) I ended up having to modify the pattern a bit.  While the original was for a floor length gown, I had to make a shorter skirt.  To make the edge of the skirt more interesting I also used a picot bind off.  Attempt one though was going to need a bit more yarn than I had (I was about 20 stitches away from finishing when I ran out and needed to go back and pick up 180+ stitches- d'oh!).  I decreased the number of picots and all was well (I cast on 2, bound off 6 and repeated this pattern right the way through).

Here is one of my old Barbie dolls testing out the dress (two photos, one without flash, one with because the detail shows better without but the colour is truer with flash).   It is now wrapped up, ready for Christmas day and I can now get back to knitting my Queen Anne's curse (I've nearly finished Chart 3).