Thursday, June 14, 2007

A jacket for Plum Blossom's baby

My college roommate, who is Chinese, and whom we jokingly called Little Plum Blossom after the awful caricature in "Anything Goes," just had a baby daughter. Little Peach Blossom?


In celebration, I knit her a good-luck red jacket with a mandarin collar and a stylishly asymmetrical placket. Right now there are no buttons; I am about to knit myself a ton of i-cord to make into knotted buttons that suit the Chinese style.

Because I am too lazy to go out and buy yarn in two colors that have the same gauge, I worked with a smaller gauge black yarn for the cuffs and collar, leading to some tough decisions about how to make the collar stand up correctly. I ended up turning a hem on the collar, cuffs and bottom hem to give them a bit more heft, but left the button band single, so that it would match the doubled bulk of the rest when buttoned up -- which, given the asymmetry, I am assuming it will always be. Here's a picture to illustrate:

What pleases me is the ease and lack of bulk in tacking down live stitches -- so much easier than binding off and sewing up! I'll be doing this at the bottom of my Arwen (which is on hiatus while I knit a boxful of baby things)

2 comments:

Batty said...

What a beautiful little girl! The jacket looks amazing, and she'll look adorable in it. Not that she needs any help in the adorableness department, because she's precious!

Stefaneener said...

What a lovely baby. Is that a cosleeper? That jacket is going to make her a fan of couture for the rest of her life, you know.