Every once and again, crocheters will ask me how they can crochet one of my designs.. but in another size. Let’s focus today on how to do that for kids and pre-teens.
For instance, this week, Karine S. asked: “Hi Sylvie do you sell a pattern for a dancing poppies sweater in sizes 6 years and 4 years? I’m not very good at adapting sizes..”
So. My first answer is No, as those cardigans are only available in women’s sizes and baby/toddler sizes…
BUT the good news is that it’s super simple to adapt the baby bolero to kids sizes thanks to this little “trick” I’m about to reveal now:
Most of my sweater patterns (except for the Floralie and SaperliPOPette! at this point…) are based on the same basic numbers: I have a set of 4 kids sizes and a set of 5 women’s sizes. Rather than redoing all the math and sizing every time, I reuse those basic numbers which I’ll tweak and adapt depening on the features of each design: hood or lower neckline, waist shaping or boxy look, long sleeves or sleeveless…
It’s a bit like the “body block” which seamstresses use as starting point to create all sorts of garments… 😉
SO.
This means that you can very easily:
- follow the instructions of a design sized for babies such as the Dancing poppies bolero,
- with the sizing/yarn/gauge combo of another design sized for older children such as the Ermeline hooded cardigan, explained in sizes 2 to 8 years old:
In the case of Karine’s question, simply follow the 2nd size directions of the baby bolero (= size 4 years for Ermeline) but using a thicker Aran-type yarn at a gauge of 14 sts and 7.25 rows = 10 cm/ 4 inches…
And you will have a Dancing poppies bolero to fit a 4 year old !
Then of course, you can also do things the other way round… like if you’d like to make an Armel hooded cardi or a Mini Marguerite cardigan in baby sizes taille b