Belle Amigurumi

For

I've always really loved Belle from Beauty and the Beast.  She's a bookworm, like me   Also, her and Rumplestiltskin are my favorite couple ever on Once Upon a Time, lol.

I went with the Disney version because I like Disney, and Beauty and the Beast is one of my favorite Disney movies

So this is a compilation of New Things.  The pattern for the doll itself took me surprisingly few tries to get right (and now that I've written it, I think there may be more princesses in the future ).  Her hair is a combination of three separate techniques, but in the end, looks surprisingly like Belle's hair.  Which is good, because she looked REALLY creepy without hair XD.  I also wasn't sure what size eyes to go with in the beginning, but I'm glad I went with the 12mm.  She looks a little anime-esque, which for me is A-OK.  Her arms (and legs, for that matter) have pipe cleaners in them, and thus are pose-able. 

I'd only ever crocheted dresses from patterns before this, and only like two of them, so the dress was really quite a challenge.  I did sightly modify her official dress (I refuse to accept the 2012 redesigns) to include the more swishy layer underneath to give it a little more texture than just the eight sections going all the way to the floor the original dress has.  Trying to figure out how to do those sections at all was a whole other ball of wax, as crocheted fabric does not gather like woven fabric does... I could have made it out of crochet thread to make it a little more woven fabric-like, I suppose, but I wanted to keep the majority material yarn.  So she has the over skirt, the underskirt, and a half petticoat, which is worked with a shell pattern you can't really see very well in the picture (which is unfortunate, because I really liked it).  The shoulder portion also gave me headaches, but I like the way it looks now. 

I used seed beads in a pearl color at the top of her dress and at the tips of the swag things for a bit of extra texture, and I added the rose embellishments because if I have any real problem with Disney's designs, its that they are rather monochromatic, and the roses added a nice pop of color while staying true to Belle's theme.  Everything is hand sewed in place. 

She stands at 9.5' tall (the volume of her multiple skirts does allow her to stand on her own, as well).  Maybe ~30 hours to complete?