Welcome Elena

 

This is my newest doll, Elena.  I made her by combining patterns from Beth Webber's blog By Hook,By Hand http://byhookbyhand.blogspot.com/. These patterns are absolutely wonderful, and they are free! If you love dolls you have to check out her blog.

I had wanted to make a doll the size of a Free Spirit (Left), with the body type of the Mini Spirit (Right), but I also wanted her to be jointed like the Teacup Spirit(not pictured).

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She is made with Patons Classic Wool. Her eyes are from Glass Eyes Online. I found them on Ebay but they also have there own web site http://www.glasseyesonline.com/. I bought a 12 pack of their 9mm  iridescent plastic safety eyes with washers.

 The colours are light green, dark green, aqua, blue, purple and rust. I love the way they sparkle.

For her hair I combined 2 different yarns. Sensations Beautiful (Left) and a wool mohair blend (Right). I've miss placed the wrapper. When I find it I will update the brand.

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 I really like the texture I got by mixing the yarns.

I made large curls on top of the wig cap, front

and back. It made the head really heavy and sometimes flops over. I'll try something different next time.

 For Elena's dress I used Beth Webber's pattern Cap Sleeve A-Line Dress under Mini Free Spirit Patterns at her blog http://byhookbyhand.blogspot.com/ I made some minor adjustments to make it large enough for Elena.
In row 1 I made 10 links.
Row 7: (armhole dividing row) Working in BLO, sc in next 10 sc, ch7, skip next 20 sc, sc in the next 20 sc, ch 7, skip nest 20 sc, sc in remaining 10 sc, ch 3, turn. (ch 3 counts as beginning dc of next row)
I repeated rows 13 and 14, 3 times before going on to row 15.

 For the main colour of the dress(pink) and contrasting colour 2(green) I used Aunt Lydias Bamboo crochet thread size 10 pictured in the foreground. It is very soft and silky and hangs nicely. Contrasting colour 1(white) is a size 10 cotton crochet thread is a bit stiffer and holds the bottom of the dress out nicely.

 The Pink is the bamboo thread and the Purple is the cotton.