Saturday, October 31, 2015

A happy Hallowe'en

Yup, I finished all the dresses. So: a Happy Hallowe'en from "the ghouls"

halloween 2

Who remind you that if you are going out in the northern US or Canada, to dress warmly, so you don't freeze your Bun bars off....

(All the dresses are sock yarn, variants of dresses available for free from various knitters - I found them through a Ravelry search)

A close up of the two newest dresses:

Draculaura without her stole. This is called "Spring is Coming" dress and the skirt is done with a yarn-over, then slip pattern.

Draculaura

And here's Frankie's dress ("Frankie Stein" - as I said, they all have punning sorts of names). It's a modification of the one I made for Maureen without the picot edge and making it with a back opening (I didn't know if Frankie's head would take off safely to pull it on over her neck. Actually, the back opening allowed me to cinch up the waist a little so it fits better....I probably need to block it so the hem won't roll. This was Paton's FX, which is slightly thicker than most sock yarn.

frankie dress

(This is the "Geek Chic" Frankie so she came with glasses. I admit I rather like her with glasses so I kept them on her even though they don't exactly match the dress)

And here is a Can-can style shot showing the underdrawers I made. Yes, they are kind of "granny style" or "Witches' Britches" but that was what I was able to figure out quickly.

"witches' britches"

The best I recall of what I did was this:

Cast on 24 sts on size 1 needles. Join to knit in the round, and do six or seven rounds of k1, p1 ribbing. Then, change to stockinette (knit every row) and *k5, k f&b* around so you have increased four stitches. Knit about 7-8 rounds (you have to keep holding it up to the doll to determine when it's long enough). Then, rearrange the stitches so it is 7-14-7 on three needles, knit to the end of the first needle and increase, then increase at the start and end of the second needle, and increase at the start of the third needle - you have added four more stitches but right at the wide spot of the hips.

Knit four or five more rounds. When the pants look long enough, divide to work the legs: put the first sixteen stitches of the round on three needles (5-6-5) and put the remaining sixteen stitches on a holder. Knit the sixteen stitches on the three needles in the round for "enough" rounds (I think I did five). Then do a couple of rounds of k 1, p1 ribbing and bind off in rib. Then take the stitches on the holder and place them on the needles (again, 5-6-5) and starting at the crotch, join the yarn back in and knit around until that leg is the same length as the other one, do the ribbing, and bind off.

You could probably modify this pattern for slacks if you made it a bit looser at the hips and then maybe tapered the legs a bit as you went down.

This kind of stuff is fun to do, and fast - it's a small investment of both time and yarn, and as I said, fit (or at least, mobility) is less of a worry than with clothes for "real" people.


No comments: