Sparkles for the Five-Year-Old

I was never a big doll fan as a kid. Stuffed animals? Yes. My Little Ponies? DOUBLE YES. Dumping my giant box of crayons out on the floor simply so I could then put them back in organized by color? A THOUSAND YESES. Dolls? Not really.

But my five-year-old niece is, and therefore:

American Girl Lace Dress (mine ravelled here),

knit in Universal Yarn Star Light, color 101

It's knit from the bottom up in a simple lace pattern. You decrease a bunch of stitches for the bodice and knit that in stockinette.

There are two tiny buttons on the back at the neck. The pattern says to crochet loops and sew them on, but I just did simple yarnover buttonholes in the edging. It works great and you know how my crochet skills are.*

The pattern also calls for poofy sleeves knit in the same lace pattern. I chose to do simple short sleeves, edged in garter stitch to match the bottom of the skirt (and hopefully keep it from curling).

Here's a closeup of the lace:

There are tons of patterns written for this size doll, and something in worsted weight would have gone a lot faster than light fingering weight. However, I decided that all dolls need a sparkly, lacy dress (the white has sparkles in it that you can't see in these photos), and I might as well go big if I was going to do it at all. Well, not big-- go small.

You know what I mean.

One Christmas present down!

*Practically nonexistent