I found out just after Christmas that a friend of mine was expecting her first baby. This friend is a full-on cat lover, so when I found a cute cat jumper pattern on Ravelry, I decided to have a go at it myself, converted into a baby blanket.
I used Excel, set up with a column width of three, to design my pattern, reproduced here using an iPad app for pattern designing. The cats go across in rows and also up and down in columns.
I bought some baby-friendly yarn from Deramores, Stylecraft Special Baby DK. Not knowing if it would be a boy or a girl, I thought that denim blue would be a hardy colour for hiding grubby marks and that cream would complement it in a nice contrast. I used approx. size 4 circular needles, to give me a long enough needle-length on which to spread out all the stitches.
I cast on 110 stitches in the denim and knit a border using a free stitch from Deramores "Something for the Weekend" series called Ringlet Stitch. It forms a sort of bubble-effect border.
Then I started on knitting the pattern - and WOW did it need some hefty concentration. I was using a Fair Isle colour-change style, where the colours are carried or "stranded" behind the work as you knit. Where there is a gap of more than four stitches, you catch the yarn strand between stitches, to prevent long loops of yarn that could get snagged accidentally. This makes for a pleasing patchwork pattern n the reverse of the blanket.
However the problem with these loops, even small ones, is that they could catch on very small baby fingers and toes. To avoid this, I thought I'd mount a backing piece of material to the reverse. As knitting is stretchy, I needed the backing fabric to also be stretchy, so I chose jersey cotton, like t-shirts a remade of. In fact, I cut up and used a t-shirt for this!
This would be the first time I've used a sewing machine on a piece of knitting... Bring it on!
Sewing stretchy fabrics is a nightmare. To assist a bit, I used a stretch sewing machine needle, which has a "medium ballpoint tip" (a small nobbly bit by the eye of the needle) and a special eye. These help to guide the needle between the fibres of the fabric weave, rather than breaking the threads
Thread is not usually stretchy, so if you use a standard straight machine stitch, the thread can easily snap when you stretch the garment. My machine comes with a special "stretch stitch" to help with this. The stitch uses three rows of parallel stitching with small gaps between each. However, because hey are so close together, the final result is that it looks like a normal straight stitch.
I had to sew two pieces of the jersey together to make a large enough piece for the backing. I did this using a top-stitched seam, like you get on the side of a pair of jeans.
Then came attaching the jersey to the knitting. I started with the long side seams. To keep the raw edges hidden, I decided to sew down each long side, with the raw edges contained on the inside.
To strengthen the seam, I sewed a double row of stitches up each edge. This helps keep it very secure, which I felt was necessary given that the knitted side would potentially have small holes in it, that could weaken the join.
One great thing about jersey cotton is that it doesn't fray. This means there's no need to hem the raw edges, just hide them.
I hand-sewed the short edges to seal the backing to the knitted front piece. Then I used a technique called quilting to machine sew straight lines at regular intervals down the blanket. This helps to keep the two pieces aligned properly with each other, and prevents it ballooning out. This would be particularly noticeable when the blanket was washed, which could be expected to happen often with a baby blanket.
And here it is! The final pièce de résistance! Tessellating cats!
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