Category Archives: knit pattern

Mar16

April Plans

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April Plans

My mother just got a work assignment working in Issyk Kul, so we’ll be helping take care of her horse farm off and on this spring. I’m rather excited, as it means I will have full-time access to her sewing machine and huge dining room table, which is much, much easier to sew on than mine. Just in time to make some dresses for my daughter and I! I already have some pillowcases picked out for baby J. from the local thrift store, and since I need some ribbons to finish them off I am looking forward to picking out some pretty fabrics from the store for me, too. I’ve been working out all winter and am weighing less than before I got married, so I am looking forward to making some cute little dresses for me! My plan is to make some simple pillowcase dresses for me, too, using a yard of fabric. I had one dress made this way when I was in highschool and I wore it all the time… How I miss it! Alas, when I had my late growth spurt in college (from 5’6″ to 5’8″) it suddenly went from daringly short to being too short to sit down in… So I passed it along to the Salvation Army to become another girl’s favorite dress.

I’m also excited to begin construction on my improved chicken coop and run next month, once the snow is all gone and the ground has firmed up a bit. My chickens will arrive mid-May, and after a few weeks in the kitchen they’ll be ready to make the transition outside. By the fall, we’ll have eggs! I can’t wait to have my own egg supply again. They are just so much better than anything you can buy at the market, and I love watching the chickens, too.

Our First Chickens: Moon, Phoenix & Aurora
Dec12

Warm and Cozy: A Simple Knit Dress for Babies and Toddlers

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Warm and Cozy: A Simple Knit Dress for Babies and Toddlers

This cute little dress is super simple, and super warm, perfect for layering over onesies Fall through Spring. If you can do a a basic knit stitch and thread a sweing needle, you can make this for your little one.

The thickness of your yarn and needles will affect your dress — the thicker the needles, the looser the knit. The finer your yarn, the thinner your resulting “fabric” will be.

For this dressed I used size 8 needles and a thinner, textured yarn: a beautiful nubbly purple and blue cotton/acrylic blend, which actually resulted in a tight and relatively thick “fabric” that is very soft.

I cast on 60 stiches, making the width about 20 inches, and knit row after row until it was the height I wanted: about 13 inches. Then I cast off.
I made the two straps 4 stitches wide and about 6 inches long.
After that, it was a simple matter of folding the large knit rectangle in half and sewing the two shorter ends together.
I used 1/2 inch elastic sewn to the seam at the top of the dress (the cast off end, since the way I knit that end is usually less stretchy and my plan was to gather the elastic end anyway) and then folded the “fabric” over the elastic and sewed that down on the inside of the dress, gathering it up so that the top of the dress is at least a couple inches narrower than the bottom (the dress I made should fit babies 2-8 months loosely as a warm play-dress, and then up to 1.5 years as a more fitted sweater vest). When I came full circle on the elastic, I sewed that in securely and finished off the folded down bit of the sweater so that you can’t see the elastic at all (still working on the inside of the dress).
Then I sewed in the straps, attaching them to the inside edge of the dress.
I finished the whole ensemble off with a couple of decorative butterfly buttons – adorable! The straps could easily also be made to be adjustable with functional buttons.