One Piece Boy for Carolyn

Hello dear friends,

At the beginning of this week received a mail from Carolyn who asked me if I could help her with boy’s clothes for one piece doll.  Accepted it right away! 🙂

There is really not so many crocheted boy dolls, right!? I remember my son at age 3-5 was crazy about dolls. Believe it or not, we went shopping for barbies and such dolls – barbie sisters and babies were his favorites. I am not joking!  He was crazy about dolls! Was just a faze in his childhood, but I enjoyed that faze and doll shopping 😀

So today I finished this one piece boy you can make.

What is different from doll, as you can see, I crocheted the shirt and shoes while making the body. Made him the same size as girl one, but am thinking of making the feel longer for the future dolls. Have to try it out with few different measurements to see which one works the best.

Face is painted with hobby textile paints, Marabu in different colors (white, light blue, black, medium brown, wild rose pink), and 0/3 brush. Marabu colors are water based textile colors for cotton, acrylic, wool… Can be washed on 60 degrees Celsius.

For all that asked about cheeks and how to blush them! Rhondda! (Rhondda is dear blogger friend. We talked about this painting the cheeks and trying out different techniques.) It is working fine! 😉 As I told you, was going to try with textile paints, and have to say that these work just fine. BUT! I have painted on cotton! Keep in mind that it might be more challenging and difficult to paint the fuzzy yarns.

Painting the face was fun. I didn’t make any patterns or got prepared for it, took the doll and just painted. Started with white, when dried, added light blue, when dried, added black (for eyes making).

Think this method can really personalize your doll!

Look at this boy, doesn’t he look cutely silly painted like this? 🙂

Let me explain how he is made!

Like I said, shirt, together with shoes are done making the head-body, piece.

Follow one piece doll pattern for the head and body until the row 21

This part is done in the skin color of your choice.

Change the color to one you would like to make the shirt. (I suggest you make one color shirt instead of complicating it all with two colors or more, and changing colors….make it easy and fun)!

rows 22-25  shoulders

Make arms as from one piece doll pattern.

Make 5 rows in shirt color, change color to one you use as skin color and last 4 rows finish with it.  Before last row, stuff the arm, make the last row, tie off, close the last row nicely, sewing it all around and hiding the end.

Repeat the same for the second arm.

Once done with the arms, continue with the body using shirt color of your choice.

Make body from row 26 to 33.

Now again change the colors, from shirt one to skin color and start making the legs.

Make legs in skin color from row 35 to 46.

Change color to one you would like to use for shoes.

What I did here is I stitched 2sc in one stitch to the 4 front facing stitches (to make feet looking more like shoes – not much, but again they are kind off larger than the rest of the legs). You might be asking what is the front of the doll. You will have to decide which one will be the front, so both shoes will be made the same way (4 increasing stitches in front – single crochet for the rest of the stitches). This was ROW 47 we have made.

R48 sc18 stitches

R49 *dec1, sc1* x6 (12 sts)

stuff the leg here, nicely and firmly before finishing with last row.

R50 dec6 (6 sts)

Tie off, sew the last row nicely, hide the end of the yarn inside the leg.

Repeat same steps for the next leg too!

Trousers

ch32 – sl st to the first, stitch to form the circle, ch1 (waist part of the paints finish with slip stitch to the chain of the previous row, so you will get nice and even trousers “cut”.

there are 6 rows making the waist part of the trousers. The only thing to point out making this, is that every row you need to increase by two. I did my increases on every 16th stitch.

The last, 6th row will count 42 stitches this way.

At this point we are making leggings. Each one will count 21 stitch for the all 5 rows how long the leggings will be made.

What I did, I flattened the trousers piece made, counted 21 left side = 21 right side

Slipped stitched, ch1 to one of the “circles” (leggings) I decided to make first and continued with single crochet of 21 stitch for each row. (5 rows in total).

leggings are done in continuous rounds, only connecting the stitches at first row I did with slip stitch and chain.

I don’t think you will have any problems finishing the second legging. You will have 21 free stitches to connect at start/end, and continue with 21 stitch rows for the total of 5 rows to finish the legging.

Tie off, hide ends!

For the chest part of the trousers, find the middle, mark that stitch and count four to each side (making total of 9 stitches.

Slip stitch the yarn to first stitch of these nine you counted, ch1, and stitch the following 8 stitches (making the first row of 9 stitche

make 5 rows of 9 stitches for this part.

continue making suspenders now:

chain21 and slip stitch20 going back.

sc9 again, making R6 at trousers top, at the last stitch continue making other side suspenders as well; ch21, slip stitch 20, finish with slip stitch to he side stitch of the last row.

You can sew the suspenders at the back of the trousers, tie off, hide ends.

Pockets were done with little bit of brown felt I cut and glued on trousers.

Here is the side view of the boy so you can see how are the trousers finished and how the hair looks fro the hair looks from behind.

Hair

This little guy is really curly one! I made the hair making chains of 10 stitches and then made 2 single crochet stitches in each stitch repeating the same procedure for every stitch around the hair piece made.

If you ask me, for fairly curly, but still nice and curly hair you can do this method of chain and slip stitch for every second stitch around.

Here is how the base was done:

ch21

R1-R5 sc20

for the next 6 rows, at the beginning of the row, skip 1st stitch and continue. This way you will shape the back of the hair piece into nice and round for the ringlets to fit just perfectly.

Do as you would usually make the row, ch1 at the end, turn and just skip the first stitch. This chain will round the end nicely.

Once done with the base, start making ringlets. For each of the stitch around ch10, slip stitch9

Finishing the last stitch tie off leaving pretty long end for sewing the hair to the head .

Hat

Hat really doesn’t fit in the way to stand on his own. It is more as decoration while photo was taken. If you want hat to fit and stay on the head, you will need to stuff it an sew it on. I just pinned mine while taking the photos.

Here it is how is made

Ch12

R1 sc10, 3sc in one st, sc9, 2sc in one st. (24)

R2 inc1, sc9, inc3, sc9, inc2 (30)

R3 inc1, sc10 inc1, sc1, inc1, sc, inc1, sc10, inc1, sc1, inc1, sc1 (36)

R4 sc1, inc1, sc11, inc1, sc2, inc1 sc2, inc1, sc11, inc1, sc2, inc1, sc1 (42)

R5 sc2, in1, sc12, in1, sc3, in1, sc3, inc1, sc12, inc1, sc3 inc1, sc1 (48)