A Test Bib

I'm making a batch of baby bibs as gifts for several friends with new or imminent babies.  I traced the pattern off of a set of handmade bibs we received from my friend Evelyn when my older child was born.  They were easily the most useful handmade baby gift we got, so I want to pass them along!

Each bib uses almost 3 yards of double-fold bias tape.  In the original set, Evelyn used handmade flannel bias tape - I can't imagine making and pressing that kind of quantity, so these babies are getting storebought poly/cotton binding.  

Knitting this Fall

With a baby, a toddler, a full-time job, and a pandemic going on, I didn't get much knitting done this summer and fall.  But I did get a little bit done.  The baby needed a hat, and I wanted to knit it for him, so my mom was gracious enough to watch the kids while I sat in her family room and knitted almost half a hat one day in October (even though we don't live in our house, she's the 5th member of our household for pandemic purposes).  I used about half a skein of the same Malabrigo Rios I used for his newborn frog sweater, which no longer fits.  The pattern is Tin Can Knits' Beloved hat/bonnet. I made the toddler size for my then 7-month-old, and it fits him perfectly.  

The other knitting project I finished was a pair of socks for a friend.  Her younger son has Down syndrome, and World Down Syndrome Day is celebrated on 3/21 by wearing crazy socks.  When I saw this pattern from one of my favorite knitting bloggers, I knew I had to make these for my friend!  The yarn is KnitPicks Felici and Stroll sock.  Blue and yellow are the Down syndrome awareness colors.  I started these socks in early March and had the wild idea that I'd finish them in time for World Down Syndrome Day 2020, but I didn't manage it.  Instead, I managed to finish them in October and did a front porch drop-off at my friend's house.  She was delighted with them, and pointed out that I finished them in plenty of time for World Down Syndrome Day 2021!

Here's a photo of the index card I used to keep track of the pattern.  It was fun and fairly easy to knit!

 

Owl Baby Quilt

This is an old project.  I made two baby quilts last summer from the same easy pattern, from  book called 3-Fabric Quilts.  This one was for my cousin's baby, born August 2019, and the other was for a colleague's baby, born September 2019.  I can't find a photograph of the other one, but I was happy with how both of them turned out.

They were very easy and quick to make.  I think the most time-consuming part was thread-basting them.  I would definitely use this pattern or something similar again!

Newborn Frog Sweater

This is actually a recent project - I only finished it about a month ago!  I started it after we got home from the hospital with our new baby, born at the end of March.  It was an easy and quick knit, and turned out great!  The yarn is Malabrigo Rios, and it was wonderful to work with and looks fantastic in the finished sweater.  I think it will hold up well, too - it's a pretty firmly spun yarn.  

The pattern is TinCanKnits Harvest in the smallest size.  I lengthened the body a bit, but not the sleeves (and I wish I had lengthened the body a bit more, because my babies are long and skinny).  The sleeves are the perfect length.  This pattern is awesome - it's free, and like all TinCanKnits patterns it includes an unbelievably wide size range, from newborn to very large adult.  I included the optional buttonholes, and closed it with buttons from my button jar, salvaged from some worn out item of clothing that I can't remember.

Newborn Sweater

I made this tiny sweater for a friend's baby daughter, who was born in October.  I had every intention of knitting it quickly, but in the end finished it just before Christmas and finally managed to mail it out today. 

It's the smallest size of Baby Tea Leaves, knit in Ella Rae Lace Merino DK.

Rainbow Baby Quilt

 One of my friends from high school had a baby boy in July, and I made a quilt for him.  I used a pattern out of a book I borrowed from my mom.  It was reasonably fast and easy to make, and I used a lot of scraps - I did buy new fabric for the background and backing, but all of the colored fabrics were leftover from previous projects. 

The backing is a nice thick cloud-print flannel.  It should be very cosy this winter!

I tried a new basting technique with this quilt.  I thread-basted it instead of using basting spray, which has been my go-to basting method for many years.  The thread-basting was very time-consuming, but it held the layers together nicely and I really appreciate not having to buy basting spray or deal with its fumes.  I was satisfied, and after I finished this quilt I bought some curved needles to make thread-basting easier in the future.

I quilted the quilt using the suggestion in the book with the pattern.  I used my walking foot to quilt a curved "echo" around each colored diamond.  It was relatively fast and came out looking really nice.  It's not a very dense quilting pattern, which made the finished quilt nice and soft.  

All in all, I'm really happy with how this quilt turned out.  The only thing I'm not thrilled with is my failure to heat-set the ink I used to write the label on the binding - it smeared in the wash.  But I've learned my lesson and I won't make that mistake again!

Swoon Baby Quilt

Another in the 2018-2019 baby quilt series.  This is a 24" square swoon block with some borders added.  It's backed with a nice cozy cloud-print flannel that I bought at my local quilt shop.  

This is for a baby girl born to some of our friends at the beginning of February.  Her mom is an ecologist, which is why I picked the trees as the main focus print.  It's actually supposed to be a Christmas print, but it works for any time of year!  The background has a shimmery metallic print, and the binding is a text print with a berry recipe on it - the parents are into canning, so I thought they would enjoy that.

I was careful to arrange all of the pieces so that the trees pointed upwards.  I quilted the swoon block in the ditch, and then did a square spiral in the borders.  The quilting was easy, and I think pretty effective.

We delivered this quilt in person during spring break in March.  The recipient is so sweet and adorable!

There are 3 more baby quilts to come this summer, not including my baby's toddler bed quilt (we were gifted several beautiful hand-made quilts and blankets, so I decided to enlarge the baby quilt I had planned to make.  The top is finished but I still need to piece the backing before I can baste and quilt it).  I'm a little burned out on baby quilts right now, so I'm taking a break during Me-Made-May to sew some apparel.

Another baby quilt

This is a baby quilt I made for some college friends of my husband's last summer.  Their baby was born the same week as mine, and I worked on the quilt off and on through the summer (often with my baby asleep in the bouncer chair next to my sewing desk).

I got the idea for the pattern from a quilt in a blog post I read last spring, but I didn't love the way the pinwheels were arranged in that quilt.  Instead, I chose 5 blocks from an old modern half-square triangle quiltalong, and made them 8" square.  I found this awesome paper airplane print for the back, and some typewriter keys for the binding (the mother is an archivist, so I thought she would get a kick out of those prints).

Then I quilted the HST blocks in the ditch and filled in each of the large bars with a different FMQ design.

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out!

Sheepie Sweater

I knit this sweater for my baby last Spring - I had it all finished except the button plackets before he was born, and I finished the plackets and sewed the buttons on sometime in June.  (It was pretty much the only knitting I did between when the baby was born and the end of the Fall semester.)

I used Melissa Kemmerer's Sheepish Little Sweater Light pattern and Cascade Heritage sock yarn that my mom had leftover after knitting me a pair of sheepie socks for my birthday.  The only major change I made to the pattern was to add a button placket along one of the raglan lines - I got the idea from some sweaters that the Yarn Harlot had knitted for her nephew many years ago, and I'm really glad I did because otherwise the neckhole would have been way too small to get over the baby's head. I think I did make some modifications to the pattern having to do with gauge and size, but I can't remember what they were at this point.  I think I tried to aim for finished measurements in the 12 month size, and that worked out pretty well.  The sweater has fitted him this fall and winter, although the sleeves are still too long.

I'm really proud of this sweater, and I had planned to enter it in the state fair at the end of the summer, but in my sleep-deprived haze I missed the drop-off day for fair entries.  I was really disappointed, but I'll have to knit something else equally awesome to enter next year instead.

Changing pad liners

When my husband and I were putting together our baby registry, one thing we added (and then received) was a set of changing pad liners, with the idea that when the baby pees during a diaper change, you only have to wash the liner and not the whole changing pad cover. It's a great idea, but we found that the commercial liners didn't wash well at all.

I replaced them with a set of 5 homemade liners.  They have PUL backing (the same material that cloth diaper covers/exteriors are made from) and a cotton flannel face.  I cut the two layers into 12.5"x26" rectangles (this makes them a little bigger than the commercial ones, which is nice), and then traced around a small plate to round the corners.  I used wonder clips to clip the two layers together, right sides out, and serged around the edge. 

I made two sets of 5 liners: one set for us, and another set for some friends who have a baby the same age.  The white PUL that JoAnn sells is 64" wide, so a yard and a half of it was enough for both sets.  The ones pictured here are made with flannel I had in my stash, and I bought some more flannel to complete our set. 

These were quick and easy, and we use them a ton!  I'm getting ready to make two more sets for two families in our friend-circles who are expecting babies this month.  I think 1.5 yards of extra-wide PUL and 2.75 yards of 44" wide flannel is the right amount to buy to make two sets of 5 changing pad liners.

Dinosaur baby quilt with scientific integrity

One of my best friends from college has a baby exactly 12 weeks older than mine.  While we were pregnant, I offered to make a quilt for her baby, and asked if she and her husband had any theme or color requests.  They asked for a dinosaur quilt with blues, greens, and yellows, but no purple. 

I immediately started searching the internet, and found these amazing paper-pieced dinosaur blocks.  Robert helped me choose three of the blocks, and I just bought those three patterns individually rather than the whole bundle.  All three of these dinosaurs - the pteranodon, velociraptor, and triceratops - are from the cretaceous era.  Since my friend is a scientist, we didn't want to send her baby a quilt that mixed dinosaurs from different eras (hence the scientific integrity).

I used some scraps from my stash and supplemented with some fabric from my local quilt shop.  It turns out the owner of the shop really likes dinosaur novelty fabric, so she had a great selection for me to choose from, and was very excited to hear about the dinosaur baby quilt!

The quilt is large for a baby quilt - if I'm remembering right, it finished at about 42" x 52".  The patchwork squares are 3" finished, and I had half a yard of the dino fossil fabric in the horizontal stripes.  I quilted a diagonal grid in the patchwork and dinosaur sections and parallel horizontal lines in the fossil stripes.  By the time I was done with the piecing, I wanted to quilt in a way that would be relatively easy and not detract from the dinos. 

I'm thrilled with how this quilt turned out, and my friend and her husband were, too! 

Two Newborn Sweaters

When I made last year's Christmas sweaters for my niece and nephew, I bought three balls of worsted weight yarn for each of them, and each sweater used two full balls plus just a bit of the third.  When I finished, I had a good brainstorm about what would be a good use for about 200 yards of superwash worsted weight yarn in each of pink and yellow, and I hit on newborn sweaters!  I picked out a free pattern on Ravelry that would be good for any gender - Olive You Too.

I made two almost exactly the same, and finished them in February.  The pink one is for a friend's daughter and I made it exactly as written in the pattern. 

The yellow one is for my baby (who is expected to be a boy), and the only thing I changed was the buttonhole placement and number of buttons - I thought the buttons grouped at the top were a little bit on the girly side.  If you're paying attention to the photos, you'll notice that I also crossed the cables the other way on the yellow one - that started out as an accident, and when I noticed half-way through the sweater I decided to make it a design feature rather than ripping out to start over.

This project was very successful!  It used almost all of the leftover yarn (and the buttons were from my button jar), and my friend's daughter looks adorable in her sweater.  I'm excited for my baby to wear his!

Pattern:  Olive You Too by Taiga Hilliard Designs
Size: 0-3 months
Yarn: Yalley Yarns Superwash Worsted, about 200 yards per sweater
Needles: 4mm
Started/Completed: January 2018/February 2018
Modifications: None for the pink sweater.  For the yellow sweater, I crossed all of the cables the other way and made five buttonholes evenly spaced along the button band instead of four buttons all near the top.

Tiny Roller Skate Dress

I made this tiny Oliver + S Roller Skate dress for my cousin's baby.  It's the 6-12 month size, since I didn't make it until she was almost six months old.  It was pretty easy to sew, didn't take too much fabric, and turned out pretty cute.  I would definitely make it again, maybe with pockets if it was for an older child.  Next time, to save even more fabric and make it lighter for summer, I might try using bias binding for the elastic casing and to finish the sleeve/armhole edges.

Moda Love Baby Quilt

One of my good friends from grad school had a baby girl in mid-April, and I wanted to send a quilt for her.  I decided to finish this little quilt top, which I stitched up in November 2015.  The quilt top was really cute, but it had two problems: it wasn't flat, and it was too big for the 1 yard of backing fabric I had bought when I bought the charm pack I used for the top.

I did exactly what I had outlined in my previous post about the quilt top.  I trimmed a few inches off two of the borders, and pieced a row of leftover charm squares flanked by grey strips into the back.  It was a tight squeeze (the pieced back was exactly the same size as the top!) but it worked.

This is the first quilt I quilted on my new vintage Singer.  I did an orange peel pattern in the grid, and wavy flower vines in the borders.  The non-flatness of the top was indeed not a problem, especially after I washed the whole quilt.  It's soft and cosy - not too densely quilted.  I forgot to measure the quilt after I washed it, but I think it's about 40 by 42 inches.

I'm very happy with how this little quilt turned out.  I like the pattern, and I could definitely see myself using it again, either as a baby quilt or as a bed quilt for a full or queen sized bed (using 10" squares instead of 5").

Birthday shirt

My nephew just had his first birthday.  I wanted to make him something to wear, like I've done for his sister for each of her birthdays.  I chose the Oliver + S sketchbook shirt.  I made the 12-18 months size and it fit him - I hear he's already worn it twice!

The only modification I made to the pattern was to use snaps instead of buttons.  I figured that snaps are easier for me to put in than buttons and buttonholes, and are also easier for his parents to fasten and unfasten when they're dressing him.

I felt like a sewing rockstar when I put in the collar - I followed the instructions in the pattern, including hand basting the collar to the shirt rather than pinning, and it went very smoothly.  Next time, I will use Nicole's trick of cutting the interfacing for the collar to make it fold more nicely.  I also love the little box pleat in the back.

I think I will be making this one again as my nephew gets bigger.  And it was a great way to dip my feet into shirt sewing.  I plan to work my way up to shirtdresses and men's and women's dress shirts!

Handmade Christmas Part 2

I made Christmas sweaters for my niece, who is 2, and my nephew, who is now 7 months old.  The one for my nephew is the 12-month size of Trellis, heavily modified for symmetry and to reduce seaming.  The yarn is Berroco Vintage, which I didn't really love knitting with.  I chose it because it's the right weight, it's machine washable, and it's only 40% wool (which means it's 60% synthetic, hence the not loving it) and for a while it looked like my nephew was going to have really sensitive skin, so I didn't want to knit him something 100% wool that he might be allergic to. Also, I really, really do love this color green.  Robert really liked the finished sweater, and tried to request one in his size.  He might eventually get one, but probably not any time soon.

For my niece, I used the kids raglan recipe from The Knitter's Handy Book of Top-Down Sweaters.  I knit the smallest size.  I was inspired by this sweater (knit by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee several years ago).  The colored yarn is Liberty Wool color #7864.  I loved knitting with this yarn.  The grey yarn is Valley Yarns Charlemont, held double.  I found these cute little star buttons that I think are perfect for this sweater.

I really kind of want a sweater exactly like this.  Too bad I already have a lot of sweaters (and plans for more sweaters that aren't this one).

Here's a picture of the back of my nephew's sweater.  It's symmetric, which makes me happy!  The one thing I'm not in love with about this sweater is the seam at the back of the collar, which is visible in this photo if you look closely.  The instructions said to graft it, which I did in stockinette after spending over an hour researching grafting in seed stitch.  Turns out a true seed stitch graft isn't possible.  This was highly disappointing to me, but I can't think of any solution.

We also received a few handmade gifts, including this succulent sitting in a knitted felted succulent sweater.  Isn't it adorable?

Star baby quilt top - with a slight problem

A few weeks ago (actually, a few weeks before Thanksgiving) I was feeling like I had done a lot of apparel sewing this year and not enough quilting.  I have fabric and pattern all ready to go for two or three lap to bed size quilts, but I was also feeling kind of overwhelmed with work and job-searching (I'm expecting to graduate in May), so I pulled out a Simply Color charm pack I've had sitting around for a while and the leftover grey background fabric from my Half Moon Modern Half-Square Triangle quilt and went to town with this free Moda pattern.

It took two evenings to piece the top.  I didn't trim my HST units or pin any seams until I had all of the rows sewn together.  It was quick and easy and fun, and really satisfying to get it done quickly, and I think it looks great - but it is decidedly not flat, which I'm feeling pretty okay about.  I think it will quilt out just fine.  I am not stressing out about this little baby quilt.

The problem came at the end of the second night of piecing, when I pulled out the fabric I had bought for backing and binding when I bought the charm pack.  I only have one yard of the backing fabric.  Lately I've been in a groove of making baby quilts about 40" by 50" and so I assumed that I would have 1.5 yards for the backing, but I don't.  I don't have enough binding fabric to do anything but bind it (only 1/3 yard!) and I don't have any of the grey fabric left over.  I think what I'm going to do is trim 4" of of the two wider borders on the top and then piece that fabric into the back along with a few leftover charm squares that didn't get used in the top.

I'm not really feeling inspired to finish this quilt right now, but at least I have a plan for how to finish it.  I don't like to have long-term hibernating UFOs, but I also don't know of any babies who will be needing a quilt from me any time soon, so I think I'm going to piece the back and then fold it all up until I feel like finishing it.

Being a mathematician improves my knitting

I am a mathematician.  The fact that I am a mathematician shapes the way I think, and slips out when I tell my mom that she doesn't need to worry about my apartment flooding because it's at a local maximum, or how I have a special appreciation for the non-simply-connected geological features at Arches National Park, or in my knitting.  Lately I've been noticing how my mathematical ways of thinking are helping me knit this little cable cardigan (Trellis from Knitty) for my nephew.

Modular Arithmetic: This particular cardigan has an 18-row cable pattern that repeats several times beginning with row 9 of the sweater body, while at the same time you knit a buttonhole every tenth row beginning in row 5.  So I know that I need to put a buttonhole in row 5, 15, 25, 35, and 45.  I want to start counting my rows with row 1 of the CABLE PATTERN, so using the new numbering system for rows, I'll be putting buttonholes in row 7 (this is the second buttonhole), 17, 27, and 37.  Then using modular arithmetic (also known as clock arithmetic) I reduce those modulo 18 and work buttonholes in rows 7, 17, 9, and 1 of the CABLE PATTERN. For me, this is much easier than trying to keep track of one count for the cable pattern and another for the buttonholes - instead, I just track everything in terms of the cable pattern.

Symmetry:  If you look closely at my photos in this post and compare them to the photos in the pattern, you'll notice that I changed some of the cable crossings.  Many mathematicians care a lot about symmetry (non-mathematicians care about this too, of course, but we're trained to notice it wherever we can).  This is a case where I think the pattern-writer was wrong.  If you imagine a vertical line going down the middle of the back of the sweater, in the center seed stitch column, and think of reflecting one side of the sweater across that line, you would get the other side of the sweater.  This is called a reflectional symmetry, and it makes for a much more pleasing image than what is written in the original pattern, with all of the large fancy cables twisting to the "right" and all of the little cables twisting "left."  I fixed this so that the two large fancy cables on each of the front and back twist toward the center, and each of the little cables twists toward the large fancy cable it frames.  

Braids:   This one doesn't really improve my knitting as much as add to my enjoyment.  My research is in knot theory, which is closely related to the study of mathematical braids. Every knitted cable is a braid; in this sweater, each of the fancy cables is a two-strand braid, and each of the little cables is a four-strand braid.  Referring back to symmetry for a moment, the mirror image of a braid is its inverse, so in this sweater we see braids paired with their inverses.  It makes me so happy when my work shows up in other areas of my life!  I'm so glad I'm a mathematician - if I wasn't, I wouldn't be able to properly appreciate this little sweater!  

Re-knitting.

I feel like I'm not making any progress on my knitting lately.  I seem to be knitting everything at least twice.  This is a sweater for my nephew.  It's going to be a Christmas gift.  I knitted almost the entire body in the car on the way to and from our vacation in August ... and I'm going to rip it all out to start over.  August was way too soon to start a Christmas gift for an infant.  This is way too small.  I'm going to start over with the next size (or maybe two sizes) up.

This is my second attempt on the second sleeve of my Lofoten sweater.  I knit the first sleeve twice, too, and then I didn't think to mark which of the two sets of increases (for the two times I knit the first sleeve) was the correct one.  So of course when I got ready to knit the second sleeve, I followed the wrong one.

This first sock picture was my second (maybe third?  I can't quite remember) attempt at stripey socks.  Then I tried it on, decided the leg was too short, and ripped it back to the top of the heel because it was also kind of gapey at the back ankle and I didn't want the leg to be half ribbed and half not.  

Here it is now.  I'm much happier with it, and hopefully on this one I can replicate it on the first try when I get to the second sock.

Stars baby quilt

I made this quilt for a church friend whose baby shower was last Sunday afternoon.  It was a bit of a scramble to get it done - I started it about 96 hours before the shower.  The four star blocks are from Vintage Quilt Revival.  Except for the blue-grey background and the purple print in the stars, all of the fabrics were scraps and stash.  I think there are elements of four other baby quilts in this quilt.

For the back, I used a cut off strip from the top of this quilt, bordered with the grey background from the front and filled in with a green solid I've had in my stash for a long time - this is almost the last of it.  To wrap the quilt, I rolled it up with the back facing out, and when she opened it my friend thought it was the main side of the quilt!  I quilted it all over with loopy-loops, using charcoal thread in the bobbin for the whole thing.  I used the same charcoal thread on top for the background, and switched to an off-white for the star blocks.  Then I machine bound it.

 I labeled the quilt by writing directly on the binding at one corner on the back of the quilt using an archival permanent pen.  It finished at about 39" by 50" after washing.

I'm really pleased with how the quilt turned out, and it got lots of oohs and aahs at the baby shower.  My friend sat with it over her lap for the rest of the shower!

Now I'm about out of low-volume fabrics.  I'm also running low on the green solid and the blue wave print that has showed up in several of my recent baby quilts (although not this one).  I think I need to re-stock my stash.  I'm really wanting a fat quarter or half yard bundle of the new Modern Background Paper by Zen Chic for Moda ...