Over the weekend, my pumpkins got a good crisp frost on them out in the garden, which means it’s time to dress myself and my dolls in winter clothing. So today’s the perfect day to explain how easy it was to make my Francie doll a winter cap, using that same sock I made her little sweater dress out of last week. (Please click that link to learn more about how I made the sweater dress.)

For today’s project, I employed the stocking cap pattern from the McCall’s 8531 doll clothes patterns, which was specifically designed to fit Francie.

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As you can see in Figure 1, I traced the original McCall’s 8531 winter cap pattern onto graph paper. Once I had cut out my hat from my sock fabric, I discovered that one of the arches that makes up the top of the hat ran across an upside-down rainbow.

I wasn’t too worried about it, though, because as you can see in Figure 2, the seam allowance would dip into that rainbow, making it more of a rainbow-colored spot on the hat than an upside-down rainbow. Plus, it would be up near the top, where the pom-pom would be stitched on.

Figure 3 below shows what the hat looked like after I’d joined all three sets of arched seams. There was a little bit of a cloud on the side seam area that I was hoping wouldn’t be too weird when the hat was finished.

Figure 4 shows the hat from a side view after I’d folded it (with right sides together) and sewn down the side seam. At this point, it’s starting to come together, and we’re only four steps in.

Figure five shows the hat inside-out, from the top. This was where it got tricky. My middle and ring finger are inside the cap, holding a miniature pom-pom in place there. I had to sew a tiny pom-pom onto the spot where the spiral of the seams all came together.

I suppose I could have just glued my little tiny pom-pom on, but once you give this little winter hat to a child, well… you know where a glued-on pom-pom will end up!

And there you have it! In five easy steps, I made Francie a little winter cap, using an old sock, a miniature pom-pom, and the stocking cap pattern from McCall’s 8531 for Francie dolls!

Question: The problem with miniature pom-poms is that you can’t ever buy just four or five of them. They come in a package of a zillion tiny pom-poms! Can you think of other ways to use them? Please leave your ideas in the comments.

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Chelly Wood and the ChellyWood.com website are not affiliated with the pattern company or companies mentioned in this blog post, but Chelly finds inspiration in the doll clothes designed by these pattern companies. To purchase patterns from Simplicity, McCall’s, Butterick, Vogue, or other pattern companies shown and discussed in this blog post, please click on the links provided here. These links below the “Disclaimer” section do not help raise money for this free pattern website; they are only offered to give credit to the company that made these patterns.