Baby Blu's

I'd like to post a little about the Blu pattern by Cristina Bernardi Shiffman and Kay Gardiner.  It was published in Knitty in Winter 2005 and is available free here.

I have to disclose that I didn't use the recommended yarn, which is Rowan Denim [100% cotton].  I did this for a few reasons - I didn't have any, knitting with 100% cotton hurts my hands and, I thought these would make super cute (100% wool) longies to be worn over cloth diapers.

The pattern knit up really quickly and I was happy with it until I got to putting everything together.  I'm not sure why, but this process didn't really go very smoothly for me.  The pieces didn't seem to fit together as they should have.  The pattern is supposed to mimic jeans in every way, including the seaming.  While I appreciate the effort to copy something that is clearly great (who doesn't love jeans right?), in knitting, I felt the seaming was awkward, difficult to do well and ended up overly bulky.

I used DMC embroidary floss for my jean details.  I think it was colour 840, I liked it alot, but ended up running out before I could seam the legs.  Oh well, I just sewed them up and it worked okay. I do love the pocket details and the jean look, but next time, I would personally just make a pair of basic seamless longies and embroider those details on afterwards.  I just don't think it is worth all the extra bulk for a baby item.

I did love the method used for encasing elastic.  I've never really liked the look of a drawstring on soaker and longie patterns (from what I've read they are also impractical because the baby can't lie on it's stomach / back, depending on the placement of the drawstring, AND once the baby gets older, it is likely to pull and play with the drawstring).  I do love including totally encased elastic for the ease of getting the longies on and off.  I used what I had on hand, which was 1 inch elastic, it fit easily in the encasing, but I feel it might be too heavy duty for a tiny tummy, next time I'll likely use 1/2 in elastic instead.

There is some concern that the elastic will get gross and smelly because the soakers aren't actually washed that much, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.  I did use yarn in a constrasting colour so that I could easily see the seam and undo it if I need to replace the elastic at some point.

I hope someone out there finds this ramble of a review somewhat helpful.  Here is a quick summary:

Babies in knit jeans are really cute and the idea makes cute longies.  Skip the overly complicated construction method though and just do the jean details for the same effect.

Check out my project page here.