Little Red Riding Hood

So I have been obsessed with topsy turvy dolls lately. Two dolls in one? What's not to love about that. If you get bored with one, flip the skirt and BAM! Another doll! So when I decided to make a doll for my daughter that would fit in the diaper bag, I knew I wanted it to be a topsy turvy doll. After looking at several different ones, I loved the idea of it being a little Red Riding Hood doll.

 

 

I also decided that it would be fun to knit up the doll. I wanted the doll to be small, something that would fit well in little hands and not take up all the room in the diaper bag. But all of the patterns I found were for bigger dolls. So I kind of just cobbled together ideas from a bunch of different dolls and this is what I would up with.

(I didn't write anything down as I was making it, so this is basically just what I can see and remember.) After casting on 20 stitches with a worsted weight cream colored yarn in the round, I knit about 12 rows then switched to the red. I knit 17 rows, then switched to the purple for another 17 rows. Then to end it I switched back to the cream for another 12 rows.

I then threaded the yarn through the stitches and pulled tight and weaved in the end. I stuffed the head and threaded yarn through every other stitch right about the purple and pulled tight creating the head of the Grandma. I stuffed the body and repeated on the other end. Basically creating a long tube with a head on each end.

Next was the skirt. I started with purple and cast on 20 stitches in the round. I increased using kfb every other row evenly until I had  68 stitches. Then I knit 35 rows. I then switched to red and knit the exact same number of rows, including starting decreases (k2tog) on the same row and at the same intervals as the increases.  Then I folded the skirt in half and sewed it onto the doll.

For the arms I just did and icord with 5 stitches, beginning with the cream color for 4 rows and then switched to the dress color for an additional 11 rows. Those were then sewn onto the doll.

Then it was time for the faces. For both Grandmother and Red I "weaved" in the hair color into the doll surrounding where the face was. I am not good at embroidering faces into knitting, so I simply did knots for eyes. Red was also given a couple of braids which were sewn right at the base of her head. For her cloak I cast on 22 stitches and knit flat until I had a square that was about 5" long. I also did a border of 4 stitches of garter stitch just so the it wouldn't roll. On the last row I knit half way and then using a third needle did the three needle bind off to give it a good finished look.  Then using the same technique to create the heads, I weaved yarn through the stitches and pulled tight to give a good defined hood. Then I sewed it onto the head, finishing up the Red side of the doll.

 

For the Grandmother side, I had seen the super cute idea of having the Grandmother and the Wolf dressed up as the Grandmother. So I of course thought that would be great. On one half of her face I did the Grandmother's hair like I did Red's (without the braids of course). On the other half I needed to make the Wolf's face. I counted around the head in a circle where his face would go and came up with 24 stitches. I cast that on in the round and then decreased every 7 stitches. The next row I decreased every 6 stitches, 5 the next, and so on. When it was every 2 stitches I simply knit the full row and then continued after that with the decreases until there were only about 6 stiches left (I honestly don't remember how many but that was close) then threaded the yarn through them and pulled tight and weaved in the end. By doing that it gave me a good shaped nose which I sewed black around to give it a good defined nose, and gave him a couple of eyes. I then sewed the whole face to the back of Grandma's face.

As you can see, I needed to give them a hat to cover up the change between the faces. I cast on 8 stitches and knit in garter stitch until it covered all the way around their faces. That was then sewn on. I also wanted to give them a shawl. So I cast on 6 stitches and knit in garter stitch 2 rectangles that were about 3" long. Then I sewed those onto the shoulders crossing them in the fronts giving a triangle effect.

 

She turned out to be about 8" tall and 2" in diameter. She came out to be the perfect size for what I wanted. That's not to say she doesn't have a few imperfections though. There are a few things I would change if I ever made this doll again. (Most of those were little mistakes I didn't realize until it was too late to change without completely starting over.) So even though she was a bit of an experiment, I am quite pleased with how she turned out.

 

If you want to make your own little Red Riding Hood doll I hope that this was useful. If you have any questions please feel free to comment or email me. I'll do the best I can to help.