If you go down to the woods today...

...well. If you went down to K's preschool yesterday morning you'd have found the whole class picnicking away in the hall, since it's wet and horrible! It's her last week of preschool (and we have had much wailing about it), so there are lots of events on and Wednesday was their Teddy Bears' Picnic. K is much more obsessed with cats than bears, so we had to scrabble in the toybox a bit to find one. All we could find was a little one of just 8ins tall - and this was after I'd opened my big mouth and suggested I may be able to make something from Crochet for Bears to Wear. Oh dear. I do like to destruct-test patterns from time to time, and although the book is designed for toys of 18ins tall, there's a very clever conversion which means you can resize the outfits. I have to say I was extremely sceptical as to whether it would work, given that I was changing not only the size of the bear but the yarn and the hook as well - but it did!

Bear-y Pickin' Dress

It's a near-perfect fit. I'm not quite sure about the shoulders as it's a little too large, but given that D was going into her first growth spurt and feeding like crazy as I was trying to count rows, it's probably my mistake. Otherwise, it's absolutely spot on. And so very satisfying to make something so quickly!

Of course, when bear has a pretty dress, K must have a pretty dress too. It was quite by chance that she picked the bear's colours before remembering that she had a dress in the same lilacs and greens, so all that remained was to whizz up another quick hairband to match. 

The full outfit!

 Close-up hairband and scowl

If you'd like to make this hairband, download the pattern for free from here or from the Free Patterns page above where they all live. Just the thing for a party or a picnic!