Saturday, April 23, 2011

Lily's Birthday dress

My grandniece, Lily, turned 1 year old on April 19, and I wanted to make her this dress from the Debbie Bliss Spring/Summer 2011 magazine.  This pattern was #14 and I made size one.  Lily is pretty small and I wanted it to fit her this summer.  Instead of the Debbie Bliss Eco Baby yarn I used Brown Sheep Cotton Fine: two skeins cotton ball and one skein in mint, with size 2 and size 3 straight needles.

This was an easy knit but since I started the dress in late March I knew I had to keep at it or I wouldn't finish.  The straight knitting stripes became boring especially since the fine yarn and small needles made the progress slow.  But I stuck to my guns and finished most of the dress by the day before the birthday party (which was on April 16).

Don't you know while driving with my mom to the party I was seaming and picking up stitches for the finishing touches.  Why can I never get it into my head that even though I've finished all the pieces, the seaming and finishing sometimes takes just as long as the knitting!  Ugh.  I apologized and told Sara, Lily's mom, that she would eventually get this pretty party dress.  I was happy that I joined the party and forgot about the unfinished dress and spent time with my family (instead of sitting in a secluded part of the house trying to finish the damn dress!)

I actually ended up finishing the dress a couple of days later after I came back home.  I had already picked up another project when my daughter Kate said, "Mom, I'll mail the dress to Sara if you finish it tonight."  Ugh, she knows me too well.  So I got the dress back out and finished it in a couple more hours.  It was actually finished on April 19, Lily's first birthday.  Kate put it in the mail the next day.  I'm hoping Sara sends me a picture soon of Lily wearing it.

Damn I forgot to block it.  There you go, perfection messing with my head again.

I would definitely recommend this pattern to anyone thinking about how cute it would look on a little one.  The Brown Sheep Cotton Fine was a very good substitute.  The pattern is very straight forward.  I would put it an intermediate beginner level because the yarn is fine.

Take care, Sue