Wednesday, May 9, 2018

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.

Wednesday, May 2, 2018

Me-Made-May 2018


I, Katherine of willknitformath.blogspot.com, sign up as a participant of Me-Made-May '18. I endeavour to work on sewing garments for myself every day until my baby is born.

Last year, I wore lots of me-made clothing for Me-Made-May.  This year, I have a grand total of four non-underwear me-made (or altered) items that fit my current shape, so wearing me-mades every day or even most days isn't an option.  Instead, I want to focus on sewing some nice summer dresses that will work for nursing.  I'm planning a Washi dress with a button placket (made of lovely soft double gauze) and this knit dress, which is designed for maternity but I think will work well for nursing this summer.  I also bought supplies to make myself a nursing cover, and I'm going to count that as sewing for myself rather than for the baby.

I have a lot of sewing goals between now and when the baby is born:  not only the dresses and nursing cover for myself, but also three baby quilts - one is for a college friend's baby (born at the end of February), and it's getting close to done.  I just need to finish the second half of the machine quilting and then bind and label it.  The next one is for our baby, and the third one is for some friends who are expecting.  Their baby is due in August, but it is unfortunately looking like he may be quite premature, so I'd like to have his quilt ready for him before my baby is born.  Those two quilts are still in the planning stages.  I'd also like to make my baby an Oliver + S bucket hat for the summer and some bibs and burp cloths, and I have fabric sitting in my sewing room to make two new tablecloths for our kitchen table.   I'm sure not all of this is going to get done, so it will be nice to have time set aside for high-priority projects!  When I have a lot I want to sew and not a ton of time to do it, I tend to get paralyzed by indecision and not sew at all, so hopefully my Me-Made-May challenge will help with that!