I love crochet lace, and have many, many pattern books devoted to the subject. Crochet lace can make the loveliest little fairy dress, and so I decided to put together a tutorial to show you how to go from a simple length of crochet lace to a fairy dress :-)
Choose a pattern that would make a sweet dress, like the one above. Seven inches is about one-and-a-half times the waist measurement of the little Pocket Spirits.
Figure out how many stitches it takes to go around the waist, or where you want the dress to fit. These little dresses are short waisted, but you could make a dress with the skirt at the natural waist, or a dropped waist dress. Anyway, crochet a chain that will fit around the waist, not too tight or loose. For these dresses, made of size 8 perle cotton and a size 8 steel hook, 40 stitches was about right. Note: The chain is only used to give you an idea of how many sc stitches you need to work across the top of the lace to fit it to the doll. Work 40 sc evenly along the top of the lace. If you end up with a few more stitches, or it seems too loose, work another row of sc and decrease a few stitches to get a nice fit.
The next row will be the armhole dividing row, and once you've got the armholes made, try the fit on your doll and see how you both like it :-)
At this point, you can embellish the dress as you like, long or short sleeves, picot edgings around the neckline, whatever!A picture tutorial with more pictures and directions is available here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/29184580@N04/sets/72157624472023381/
Enjoy the crochet!