Knitted pixie hats and new resin eyes
In my 2025 retrospective post I said I wanted to document more knitting or sewing projects. I've had a few projects on the needles so far this year, and have finished two.
At the start of March I was doing some idle image searches for mid-20th-century children's clothing (looking for inspiration for DearSD clothing). I came across a photo of evacuated children during World War 2 wearing extremely cute pixie hats (hopefully you can see that photo here, or maybe here), and while the subject matter behind the photo is extremely sobering and serious (and made me want to hug my own daughter extra tight, especially given current world events), I did love the hats and wanted to replicate them in doll scale.
After an initial attempt at the hat that turned out 1/4 scale instead of 1/3 scale (I might finish it and give it to Hazel), I redid my maths and finished this striped hat for my Ranma. It fastens with a chin strap and button.
Then I decided to get a little bit fancy and go for zig-zag colourwork and i-cord ties. I think it would look good with pom-poms as well: a big one at the top and smaller ones on each tie?
Side note: Ranma has gorgeous new resin eyes here from Ms. Stein, which are a huge upgrade from her previous green glass eyes. I usually prefer glass eyes to resin, but these eyes have a beautiful depth and sparkle.
In all three hats I tried a different-but-similar technique to get the pointed back. The start is the same: cast on at the face side of the hat with enough stitches to go around the front of the doll's face, work some ribbing (or you could do garter stitch), then work straight until your knitting is just long enough to reach the back of the neck.
Then you need to create a sort of point in the middle of the knitted fabric. I tried:
- a sloped bind-off (binding off a few stitches each row, starting from the edges and working towards the middle), then folding in the middle and seaming together
- working short rows instead of the sloped bind-off, then folding the knitting in half and grafting the two sides together
- short rows with a three-needle bind-off
I think the seam or three-needle bind-off worked best when doing colourwork, otherwise the grafting looks a little messy, but all three techniques worked well. The speed at which you bind off or do short rows, i.e. how many stitches you bind off or work before turning, affects the angle of the slope and therefore the pointiness of the hat.
Then you can finish the bottom of the hat with ribbing, i-cord ties, or any other edging. I extended the ribbing on one side and made a buttonhole to fasten the first hat.
Floris also got gorgeous new eyes from Ms. Stein, so I'll end the post with him. I love how golden and creamy his whole look is right now. I've been dreaming of making him some fabulous doublet situation for a while, but there are other sewing projects taking precedence right now... hopefully more on that soon!
