Arne & Carlos - Knitted Dolls: Handmade Toys with a Designer Wardrobe, Knitting Fun for the Child in All of Us

THROUGHOUT THE BOOK, we play the same way as when we did the photo shoots. Imagine being little and getting to go into a house full of surprises; a house with strange objects and toys that you are allowed to rummage through, take out, and leave out without anyone telling you to pick up. Imagine a house with antique bureaus, big chests, and old trunks that are full of handmade clothes, dolls, and other exciting treasures that only come out into the fresh air when you come for a visit and they can stay out for as long as you like because you are having fun playing with them.

The motivation behind the knitted dolls is to make a small person who comes for a visit happy. Perhaps it is because we never had such a secret and exciting room when we were small the kind of room you only see in films. But maybe its because we are a little childlike ourselves and have really never let go of this dream. Our dolls are not only for childrenadults with a childlike frame of mind can also enjoy them. Even if you dont play with the dolls, you can still make one for someone else. This is, in many ways, a fulfilling dream for us: finally we can bring out the childlike aspects of ourselves and play through a whole book! And now we hope we can inspire you to do the same. This is, in many ways, a fulfilling dream for us: finally we can bring out the childlike aspects of ourselves and play through a whole book! And now we hope we can inspire you to do the same.

We want you to enjoy the doll patterns and clothes, design your own, and maybe make other people happy with what you have created. You might even make your own exciting and playful universe that a child or grandchild can explore Or, if you are a seasoned knitter, you could even resize these miniature patterns to knit garments for children or adults. Here is a room for playing in!And we hope you have fun and will be happy
while you indulge!

Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION Early in the 21st century, we had planned to publish a paper doll book. For a whole fall, we sat at home and drew many different dolls with their clothes. And then the dolls got a large and fantastic wardrobe with fashionable clothes and accessories. Unfortunately the paper doll book was never published but some of the clothes we had drawn for the dolls became actual models that we later began to design and produce for our fashion collections.

This chest with paper dolls lies in our archives in our studio, and we have many times referenced these drawings for inspiration and ideas for new projects. We used a Barbie doll as a mannequin; shes the perfect size to simply drape fabric around. We had done this many times when we were in the design process, trying out ideas for various garments, particularly when we were designing the summer 2003 collection we called Origami. Afterwards we made the full-size models. Some of these full-size models can still be seen at the Art Industry Museum in Oslo, in the Jubilee Exhibition on Design from 1905-2005. When anyone has a small company as we do, with just the two of us, you have to find the smartest solutions for getting a lot done in the simplest ways.

In the past few years, weve knit many sweaters in miniature because they are quick to knit. If we have ideas for a relief stitch pattern, we can knit a sweater in an evening! This has turned out to be very clever, because we can test our ideas quickly before we begin to make the garment in an adult size. In September 2009 we visited an exhibition of the French designer, Madeleine Vionnet (1876-1975), at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris. Vionnet, whose success peaked in the 1930s, was one of the most influential designers of the twentieth century. Her deceptively simple garments were created through rather complicated processes that also involved modeling and draping fabric directly on small dolls before she recreated the garment in silk or chiffon on living models. This was a fantastic exhibit with many elegant garments for inspiration.

We were most fascinated and taken by all the miniature dolls exhibited together with Vionnets designs in miniature. We studied these closely and at great length, and we talked about these dolls for a long time after we saw the exhibit. It was good to see that there were others who also used dolls as models. In 2010, we visited the Chateau de Vendeuvre, an eighteenth-century castle in Normandy. At the castle, we saw an exhibit of miniature furniture from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that the countess and owner of the castle had collected over many years. The beautiful, old furniture pieces were not toys, but precisely worked, as furniture makers would have built them to obtain a commission, or as miniature furniture that could be shown to the rich noble families who could then choose the items they wanted to order in the full size.

Once again we spent most of our time at the castle studying this miniature furniture and we dont actually remember much else about our visit. For a long time weve had the desire to make something childlike and playful. One day, when an eight-year-old niece visited, we gathered all the Barbie dolls with clothes that we had made. They came out of the chests and cabinets. Then we began to think about Barbie, the miniature furniture from the castle in Normandy, and the Madeleine Vionnet exhibit and we knew just what we had to do.