More American Girl Doll Clothes

  Here is the blue and silver dress I was working on. I wish it was this quick to make clothes for myself! This dress pattern can be found on ravelry.com. It is Classic Navy Girl Dress by Dash of Bella. The silver chain can be removed and a ribbon or something else can be added to give it a different look. 

  The headband is also by Dash of Bella and is a free ravelry download found at this link. I made a blue one and a silver one since they were so quick to work up. I also added some bling to the silver one to match the shoes. 

  For the shoes, I used part of Whistle & Ivy's free pattern called Little Dot Mary Janes. I used the newborn size. They can be found on the site here. They also have a ton of adorable baby shoe crochet patterns on that site. I've made some before in a previous post. 

Crochet Baby Photo Props

   I may have lost my mojo for a little while. I haven't been crocheting or crafting much lately. Maybe because it's summer time. I usually slow down during the summer, but not this much. I think this was more like a writer's block or crochet block, if you will. So I picked up a hook the other day and decided to get stitchin'. I'm in the process of making some photo props for a friend. I don't have any baby models, so you won't really get the full effect with my pictures. The first thing I made was a baby nest. I found the pattern on Ravelry and you can find it at this link. Hopefully it's a good size for her models.

   The next one is a Mermaid tail. I got the pattern for the tail at this link. The pattern is written in UK terms, so I had to frog it a few times before I figured that out. DC = SC, TR = DC. The shell increasing and decreasing was a little confusing, but once I got it, it wasn't so bad. I did something different for the fin. I felt like the fin in the pattern is a bit too small. I would think you need a rather large fin to swim around as a mermaid, but who knows for sure?  I made my own fin pattern, which I will post later. I got the idea for the fin at this link. The shell and starfish patterns can be found here. All of the linked crochet patterns are free! If you decide to try them and run into problems or get stuck, I will be happy to help you out. Just leave a comment or email me.

Crochet Flat Cap

  A few years ago I was searching the internet for a crochet pattern for a flat cap. The only one I found was a knitted hat and there was no pattern. Eventually I came across Men's Jeff Cap by Ken Jones AKA Crochetguy. It was the best flat cap pattern out there at the time in my opinion. If you've been with me for a while, you might remember that I made this a little over 3 years ago, and as you can see it is a bit small.

Even though I wanted it small, the first one I made was for myself and it was too small as well. I never got around to tweaking the pattern. I found another pattern recently and my hat turned out much more to my liking. It's a free tutorial by OneVirtuousWoman. She said her inspiration was from the Jeff's Cap pattern. I found her tutorial on YouTube. Click here to see it.

Here's my newest flat cap, or as she calls it "Crochango" as in crochet kango. Yea, why didn't I think of that?

Crochet Christmas Wreath

  If you follow me on Pinterest, you probably noticed that I've been looking at Christmas wreaths lately- specifically crocheted Christmas wreaths. After looking at some inspiring pins, I started making my own. I used different ideas and patterns that I saw and pieced them together for my wreath.

  Here is a link to the wreath pattern, it comes from a blog called Sew is Me. I didn't have bulky weight yarn so I just used two strands of the worsted weight, green yarn that I had stashed away. Crocheting around the wreath is not much different than crocheting around a small loop for earrings, but it seems more complicated because the wreath is HUGE in comparison. It takes a little getting used to.

  I did a search to find a poinsettia pattern and I loved the look of this one. You can find it on PlanetJune Craft Blog. I only made the smallest flower (style A on her blog). The tiny pearl in the middle is actually a pin and that's how I stuck it to the wreath. I pinned rather than glued all of the adornments so that I can use them in other things later, if I decide to.

  I couldn't resist the candy cane, and it is so easy to make. The video tutorial by Teresa Richardson can be found here on YouTube. I didn't have a pipe cleaner, but I did have some wire handy and it worked just as well.

  My little Sackboy elf is chillin' on the bottom of the wreath. Unfortunately, the free pattern that I found for this a long time ago is no longer available. It was some sort of legal thing and the blogger decided to remove it. My sons are so tempted to play with this guy. If you don't know what a Sackboy is, it's from the Sony Play Station game LittleBigPlanet.

  I had the bow from an old gift and the lettering came from Walmart. I did a lot of changing and rearranging, adding and taking away but I think I'm finally done. At one point, I wanted to make the sackboy look like he was trying to climb up and steal the candy cane, but I settled for this look. I can always change it, but for now it's ready to go on the door. 

I wish you all a Merry Christmas and hope you enjoy the holidays and time with loved ones! 

Pinoy Rasta Hat

     My cousin asked me to make a small Rasta hat with the Filipino colors. The colors were the easy part, but to make it more interesting, I wanted to put a sun on it, somehow. It was actually much easier than I thought it would be. I started with the colors, making the yellow first to make the circle, then I added the rays after finishing the rest of the hat. I am thinking of making another one with the rays extending across all of the colors and instead of one line for the rays, I'll put three, more like this:

    I am happy with how it turned out. This is my prototype, so the next one is always better. Here is the back of the hat:

Bright Floppies

   I love how these pictures turned out. I spent some time trying to get the all white background going on, but the room was dark and my spot light is broken. This is the best I could do for now. I'm still working on my photography skills.

   Three brightly colored floppy sun hats for the summer.

I just added these for sale in my online store: PerfectMix Creations