Maddie & Molly

I've given you a couple of teasers on this project, mostly because I was confident that no one would ever guess the truth: that I was knitting a set of conjoined twins.

I hope you will agree with me that they are just the cutest things, and that everyone needs a pair. I have named mine Maddie and Molly, and you can see that, though they are so much the same, they have their own personalities, too. Maddie is clearly the more outgoing one, although wary of strangers. Molly is the shy one, and mostly only talks to her sister.

Revealing the dolls to people I know has been funny, because of the way they look confused and then astonished (and then mention that I'm crazy.) It's funny how everyone questions the anatomy of the dolls, wondering why there are three legs instead of four, for example. Like snowflakes, no two sets of conjoined twins are the same, and this duo happens to be joined throughout the torso, and have two arms and three legs. Nuf said.

I took a page from Ysolda when I designed these dolls. Having knit Ysolda's Sophie bunny a while ago, I realized how great it is to construct a doll completely in one piece, in the round, without having to sew pieces together at the end. That was my goal with these dolls, as well. It begins with knitting and stuffing the body, then you pick up stitches to add the legs, then the arms, then the two heads. You stuff it all as you go, so once the second head is done, your dolls are finished. Awesome.


The girls are wearing a pretty basic blue stockingette dress, with puffed sleeves and garter stitch trim. There is a single button closure in the back of the dress. They also have a white pinafore over the dress, with eyelet details and i-cord straps and ties. It would be great to make a bunch of outfits for the girls, to play dress-up, although the third leg would certainly make pants more of a challenge to knit.

I anticipate some people feeling that these dolls are, shall we say, inappropriate, but I disagree. I think it is always a good thing to show children that people come in all shapes and sizes and are just as loveable no matter how unusual they look.

Pattern forthcoming.