CAL doll Greta - free crochet pattern, PART 4 - ASSEMBLY

My life is so busy lately, that I must confess - I cheated other priorities in order to help you finalize your Gretas before Christmas. So, here is my method for joining the parts together.

First step, you need to gather all the parts and tools together, as shown in figure 1. You will need a long needle, some buttons, strands of yarn - body and underwear colors, and pins. In figure 1, left, I highlighted the shape of the doll seen from the side - it has a curve at the back, given by the decreases on rows 19 and 20, and a curve on the face, given by decreases on rows 55 and 56 - those curves represent the bottom and the face.

Second step, you will pin-mark the first and last decrease on row 19, to help you decide next where the joining points will be, as illustrated in figure 2:

- in order to attach the legs, mark 7th and 9th rows on the underwear and 7th row from above on the legs;

- in order to attach the hands, mark 6th row from the neck, on the body, and 5th row from above on the hands.

To realise the joinings, I will explain how I did it for the legs. I passed the yarn through the needle, then I passed the needle through both holes of one button. Then, I inserted the needle into the left leg of the doll, as close as I could to the pin. I removed the pin while I was passing the needle to the other side. Then, I inserted the needle through the marks on the 9th row of the body, from my right to my left. Then, I took the right leg of the doll and passed from right to left, according to the mark. Next, I passed my needle through both holes of the second button, and executed a return to the first button on the opposite side of the doll. On the legs, I had to punch in the same place, but making sure I didn't meet the coming strand of yarn (in order to avoid tangles and allow pulling). On the body, I punched through marks on row 7. At the end of this operation, your legs should look like in figure 3. Then, you will take both yarn ends and pull as tight as you can (you may want to press from the side of the doll) until you obtain some kind of "V shape" for the underwear. In fact, it should look similar to plastic doll joints. Then, fasten off and hide the ends into the left leg.

Do similar for the hands. Then mark the belly and the bottom as pictured in figure 4, on row 15. Take the needle with white yarn , insert it from the bottom to the belly. Come back to the bottom from row 14 near the belly. Then, insert the needle into the magic ring between the legs, and come back once again to the bottom mark. Fasten off and hide the ends.

You may shape further the face as I did in figure 5 - I marked the places where I wanted the eyes and corners of the mouth, and, inserting the needle from the back of the head, I went from the left eye to the left mouth corner, then to the right mouth corner and right eye, going out through the back of the head, the same place where I entered. Pulled, fastened off and hid the ends.

For the small doll, I chose painted eyes on fabric. For the bigger doll, I used safety eyes from Aliexpress.

As I finished to decorate her head, I also present you the half-naked Lumi doll. She is some kind of self-portrait, although she looks more like me without the braids. One of the next days I will post the dress and shoes pattern, as soon as I will make them for my Lumi.

Have fun!

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Please make sure you read the first part of the amigurumi tips series - how to read the patterns proposed on this blog, before you proceed to making this doll.

If you want to post photos of what you've created following this CAL, there is a group dedicated to Papillon en Papier artwork - Papillon en Papier Wonderland. Join to keep up with my work and CALs.

Find the first part of the CAL - the hands, here.

Find the second part of the CAL - the legs, here.

Find the third part of the CAL - the body and head, here.

Find the fifth part of the CAL - the dress and shoes, here.