Surfer Dude Fashion Doll

Introducing Surfer Dude Fashion Doll... the latest project turned pattern to be joining my shop!

With Summer just around the corner, I thought it would be fitting to give you this smashing new design to get your male fashion dolls ready. The crochet pattern for this dude is undergoing testing right now and will be made available this June 2016.

In the meantime, here's a little preview of and journey behind the design...

This is one of those projects I've been keeping secret for such a long time, I can't recall the exact dates I started and finished.

If I recall correctly, I designed this outfit back in 2014, sometime after the Happily Ever After and Pretty in Pink collections.

The crochet set consists of a tank top, a pair of beach shorts, a visor, a pair of sandals, a beach ball, and a towel.

I also found a neat tutorial to make some fun surfboards too!

Originally, I had planned to make a volleyball net. However, I was having troubles finding the right balance to make it work. So, I put the project on hold for a little while.

A little while turned into a year, and that's when I decided that the set could be complete without the net. Plus, I wanted to use the yellow to work on my new flounder fishy (working on getting this pattern ready soon) for my under the sea collection.

I tucked this set into a little box to sort out later, but instead I got sidetracked by other projects including several CALs and Animal Round Ups.

The first piece of this set, the tank top, was inspired when I was working on the tops for the Gentleman and Santa Claus designs, and because I really wanted to add more casual male fashion doll designs to my shop.

It is a simple design that is worked vertically from side to side. It snap fastens in the back, but the pattern includes options for making the opening larger and making it open fully.

I went with orange since it is a great summer colour - nice and bright!

If you have been following me for some time, you will know how much fun I have creating sets.

So, a pair of shorts would be a must to go with the tank top!

These shorts were inspired from the Gentleman trousers and of course, the need to make more casual attire for him. Later, I got to thinking how fun it would be to make them like the ones guys love to wear at beaches complete with back pockets and drawstring ties.

A simple design, the shorts are worked from the bottom-down until the crotch, where they split off into each leg. Then, the pockets are worked and attached to openings in the pants.

What colour goes great with orange, why turquoise of course!

To draw both the tank top and shorts together, I thought it would be fun to add a strand of orange to the tie and make the pockets orange too.

Yes, the pockets are functional! :D What fun would they be otherwise, right?!

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Next, item to join the set was the chevron towel.

I had just discovered chevrons and was all about them. I had finished my chevron purse, and was itching to do another chevron project. I thought, chevrons are so much fun and would be the best design for a beach towel.

I had used three colours for my purse. Three just seems like a great number of colours to mesh into a project, so I looked through my stash for a third colour to join the orange and turquoise. What did I find, but a bright sunshine yellow, perfect!

Since, I had already used orange and turquoise as the main colours for the first two pieces, I decided yellow would dominate the towel. And, since I was getting low in orange, I only added a touch of it.

Chevrons are much easier to do than they appear and even more so than any other colour switching project, since the colour switches happen at the end of rows.

This beauty was worked from the bottom-up with a final edge round of yellow to tie it together.

Next item to join the set are these whimsical sandals!

This time inspiration came from my beach flip flops. You know, the foam ones with two colour soles?

I thought it would be amusing to do that with these too.

I made two soles for each shoe in separate colours, the strap in another colour and tied them all together with the last colour.

Since this fashion doll would be at the beach, there is one final piece of attire that is essential - the visor to protect his face from to much sun.

Since yellow was the only colour not to be used as the main colour for the attire pieces, I chose it along with a streak of orange.

Look out lady dolls, he's turning up the heat!

Since the beach is for fun, I thought, what's more diverting than tossing around a beach ball? That's where the first part of the inspiration comes from for the beach ball.

The next part of the inspiration comes from working tapestry crochet in the round, something I'd been wanting to do again since I learned how in 2012. Plus, using tapestry crochet would give the ball an added firmness while making colour switching easy.

Of course, it was important to use all three colours for these...

Finally, all that remained was to add some surf into the dude with some awesome surfboards!

At first, I was thinking I could crochet a board, but I was feeling particularly lazy and reasoned that I would not be able to make pretty board designs like I wanted this way.

So instead, I turned to crafting to make one...

I probably could have figured out on my own how to make one, but I chose to look to others for inspiration and found a great YouTube tutorial by MyFroggyStuff!

Using their awesome tutorial and free printables, I modified the board size for both this doll and the little child doll. From there, I made a few more changes to the process in addition to creating my own print templates. I designed 7 templates, but only used these two for the set since they match...

The crochet pattern for this set will include all six crochet pieces - tank top, beach shorts, visor, sandals, beach ball and chevron towel.

The chevron towel and possibly the tank top will also be available on the blog as a try me before you buy me freebie special.

Additionally, a tutorial with my surfboard modifications and templates will be coming to the blog soon.

Surfer Dude is complete and he's quite a stud too!

What do you think?

Are you looking forward to this pattern?

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UPDATE - May 26, 2017: This Surfer Dude Fashion Doll crochet pattern is now available in my website and Ravelry shops! Plus, 45% off with code SDUDE45 through to the end of May 2017!

My version of the surfboard tutorial will be coming later this summer 2017.