Happy Holidays! And what better way to enjoy the season than to dress up my Baby Girl as a little gingerbread cookie.
I was inspired by a photo my husband sent me of a child dressed as a gingerbread staged to look like they were baked surrounded by flour and eggs. As I thought about it, I realized I could just knit the gingerbread outfit. That's easy, right? And surely I could just design the sweater myself- I've knit colorwork sweaters before.
I began by grabbing a shirt that fit my daughter well and measured out the size of the sweater. Mistake 1: the shirt I grabbed is front closing, meaning the neck opening is not as wide as needed. As I worked, it was clear it wouldn't fit over her head so I frogged and started over.
The next iteration, I was concerned that it was too wide. But I had just frogged because it was too narrow so I told myself it's not an issue and kept going. Mistake 2: should have listened to myself.
I did some short rows to help lift the back of the neck for a better fit. Since it's for a baby I only did enough for a half-inch lift.
For the yoke, I made the colorwork chart and tried my best to keep the tension even. As I worked on it, I ran into the issue of increasing. You see, when I initially made the chart I just put increases in to be evenly spread around the yoke, but with no consideration to the colorwork. But I ran into a problem when increasing where I initially marked would have ruined the colorwork- mistake 3. So, I had a few rounds where I just put an increase where it worked for the colors. Lesson learned for next time.
At this point, I was now convinced the neckline was too wide. But I spent so long on the colorwork I didn't want to frog again. So, I made it work. I picked up stitches for the collar. Decreased down to the right size and knitted the ribbing. That way I could cinch in the neckline without frogging. Crisis averted.
The rest of the sweater came together quickly. I knitted out the body till I was happy with the length and the arms as well. About an inch before the cuff I added in more colorwork. I was aiming for classic gingerbread look.
I bound off my stitches with the Italian/Tubular bind off. I definitely was doing it wrong the first few times, but I can confirm I'm doing it correctly now. I better be- I did it 6 times in this project.
For the pants, I just used an existing pattern: Drops Design Cozy and Cute. I'd never made pants before and wasn't about to guess on this.
That being said, I do wish I had done it on my own because these pants came out wide. I could easily remove 2 inches from them and they would fit better, which is wild because I did size down on these.
Overall this set took me about 16 days- the sweater taking 12 days and the pants taking four (I was in a rush at this point). I also only have time to knit when my Baby Girl is sleeping so I'm working slower than I usually do.
I learned a lot from this. Mostly that mistakes aren't as serious as they seem, how to properly do the Tubular bind off, and anything short of catastrophe can be fixed. Also, that babies look so cute in handmade outfits.
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