FO (mostly knitting): Fairy Doll

One of my favourite projects in the last couple of weeks was a fairy doll that I made for a fanasy themed angel package. I came up with the idea of making a fairy doll, but couldn't find a pattern that I really liked. I did find a pattern for a nice looking Halloween Witch Doll, though - and went from there. It turned out to be a good source to get the dimensions right, but I found myself heavily modifying the pattern right from the start.

The pattern calls for a sport weight yarn. I used a double strand of sock yarn to produce a fairly tight fabric on 3 mm needles. 

The doll is knit in the round, starting with the legs. Changes I made to the pattern include shaping the feet, trying to shape the waist a little (I could have done a little more shaping there), hand shaping (thumbs), modifying the shoulders and neck and completely changing the head (apart from the nose shaping). I have noted down all the changes on my project page. The result of all these changes was this:

Now, I had to give her a face, hair, wings and clothing. I went with the pattern for the face, and quite liked the result. I gave her slightly rosy cheeks using a red pencil. Until this point, the question of what colour her hair would be was still open - but once I saw the face, I knew she needed black hair. I gave her LOTS of hair - in retrospect I must say I could have given her a little less.

Then I crocheted a pair of golden wings. I found a cute wing pattern as part of this fairy pattern. It's in Spanish, but provides charts. I changed hdc to dc (except for the last row), and dc to tc (US terms).

Almost done, all the fairy needed now was a dress. I decided to make up my own pattern for the dress, and this is what I came up with:

Fairy Dress

Yarn: fingering weight yarn 

Needles: 3 mm (DPNs or circulars for magic loop)

Instructions:

Skirt
Cast on 40 in main colour, join in round (start/end of round will mark the back of the dress)

R1&2: knit
R3: increase 5 sts evenly around (using m1 increase)
Repeat R1-3 until there are 80 stitches on needle.

Lace edging
R1&2: knit
R3: (p2tog, yo, k1, yo, p2tog) around
R4: knit
Repeat rows 1-4 once more.

Purl one row.
Cast off (icelandic)


Body
Starting at the centre of the back of the dress, pick up and knit 40 sitches from cast on round, join in round.
Next 5 rounds: (k1tbl, p1) around.
cast off 10, knit 20 in established pattern, cast off 10

Change to main colour, work six rows of stockinette stitch over the 20 remaining stitches, then start decreasing:

Right side rows: k2, ssk, k to 4 before end of row, k2tog, k2
Wrong side rows: purl

Repeat until 10 stitches remain
k2, cast off 6, k2

Make 2 stitch icord straps in contrast colour (long enough to tie behind the neck).

Work away all ends, put it on the fairy and enjoy ;).