Having fun with Sophie's Universe

Just over 6 years ago I taught myself to crochet. A few months later, I participated in a CAL run by Dedri Uys from lookatwhatimade.net to make the beautiful Sophie's Universe blanket. It was the first CAL that I had ever participated in where I worked the pattern along with everyone else in the same group and I learned so much from making that pattern. The photo below is the blanket I created from Dedri's lovely pattern.

I enjoyed the pattern so much that I ended up making a few different variations of the first few rounds without doing much to actually change the original design. The first of those was to create a little outfit for a doll I made for my kids.

I began with a little hat and followed the first few rounds exactly as written. I then did a slight variation to make the pattern start to turn into a hat and then added more of the Sophie pattern to create a brim of the hat.

I then created a little dress and added some of the first "flower" petals around the bottom of the dress.

A friend then suggested I should create some little bloomers for the doll and asked if I was going to keep them in the same style. That was a fun challenge and each leg of the bloomers has 2 petals though I'm not sure if you can see it in the photo.

The little hat shown above for the doll was based on a mistake I made when I was trying to find a way to make a smaller Sophie Mandala that incorporated some of the later rounds earlier on. Because, at that stage, I had no idea how to increase things evenly to keep the mandala circular, I ended up starting to form a bowl shape and then I went with it and ended up creating a brim for the hat that started forming. The photo below shows it being modeled by my oldest child. I think it looks nice as a hat.

Another little project that I've made with part of the Sophie's Universe pattern is a little angel Christmas ornament. I created a little head and body for the angel and then followed part of the Sophie's Universe pattern to create a little dress incorporating some beads at the bottom of the angel in the picot stitches.

I created my own design for the wings of the angel and incorporated several beads into the wings. I'm not sure if the photos really show off the angel at its best. This little one was created using crochet thread but I have also made a few using DK weight yarn and a bigger hook.

The original idea for the Sophie angels came from some little peg fairies that I created for my children's preschool. The Sophie pattern was used for a couple of the fairies and I came up with different ideas for the rest.