Baby Dress and Bonnet

In my last post I mentioned I’d started some baby knitting. Some women are seized by a great urge to knit a load of cute baby things and they churn out all manner of cute outfits. Some even learn how to knit when they find out that they are pregnant. I wasn’t consumed by an urge to knit, for the first three months I didn’t want to knit at all, not for me and not for the baby. Luckily babies are small and it’s quick to knit things for them. In the past two weeks I’ve started baby knitting as it just wouldn’t be right if the baby didn’t have some stuff to wear that was knitted by me. Also I was in danger of being shown up by my Mum as she is knitting two baby cardigans. I’ve knit a dress, a bonnet and a pair of booties. I’m currently powering my way through another hat.

The dress was knitted using this really simple pattern by Rebecca Gunn. It’s very simple and effective. The yarn is King Cole’s Bamboo Cotton which I got in Winnie’s Craft Cafe. I work there but don’t say much about it on the blog, it’s a great place to work and of course I think it’s well worth a visit to buy some yarn and have some coffee and cake in the cafe. Say hello to me if you do call in! Bamboo cotton is one of my favourite yarns, it’s a blend of 50% bamboo and 50% cotton, the cotton gives it some body and structure and the bamboo gives it softness, a bit of shine and good drape. It also comes in great strong colours and the balls are good value 100g ones. I love purple so decided to make the dress purple with lime green stripes. I’m not a huge fan of pastels and the pastel pinks you see for baby girls are very wishy washy so my baby is going to have cool strong coloured clothes. There were quite a few ends to sew in on the dress but I don’t mind as I’m one of these odd knitters who likes the finishing up process. I did a mattress stitch seam up the sides. There’s a nice article explaining different types of seams and when they are appropriate in the new Twist Collective here. While you’re on the website you might as well also read Carol Feller’s excellent article about the last remaining Irish woollen mills too. The dress is very cute and I got to use some of my button collection as I had some lime green buttons that matched perfectly.

After that I was on a roll so decided to start a baby hat. I was reading Knit Inc’s blog and loved the gorgeous baby bonnet she had made and so I decided I had to knit one too. I decided to try out a new yarn, Adriafil’s Sierra Andina, it is as soft as a cloud. The pattern is from Drops and has the imaginative title of bonnet in wavy pattern. I enjoyed knitting this as there is a bit of a pattern and some interesting details what with the sewing up and the picking up stitches for the bottom part. I used to hate picking up stitches but recently I think I’m getting the hang of it. I especially liked the eyelet row and turn back that creates the nice edging on the bottom.

I had a bit of the yarn left over so decided I’d knit some baby booties to match the hat. I got a loan of Knit One, Knit All by Elizabeth Zimmerman from a lovely knitter at knit night and decided to try out the tie baby booties. I’ll direct you to Knit Inc’s blog where she has a great review of the book including pictures. I think it’s a great book and I have to get a copy for myself. The things EZ does with garter stitch and shaping, it’s such inspirational knitting even if you never made anything from the book. I don’t think that would happen though as many of the patterns are so clever you feel like you just have to try them out, she also designs using a classic style that never goes out of fashion. The baby booties were a lot of fun to make and are very cute. I ran out of yarn so had to cast off the second one one row from the end. Luckily I had some similar white Drops alpaca in my stash so I used that to sew them up. I may add some ribbon to up the cute factor even more.