First Sweater and some Sewing-all for my daughter

[newamy]

It's been a lucky week for my daughter. I made her the Very Berry Tee from the recent Magknits. I know a few other people have made this. It's an easy pattern and I thought a good choice for diving into sweaters. It took about a week to knit. She picked the color Reef in Knit Picks Shine. It's a lovely jewel tone blue/green. I hadn't used Shine before. It does shine and it is very soft. The first two skeins had knots and fuzzy spots that had to be cut out so I was kind of dissappointed but subsequent skeins were okay. I made the neck ribbed insted of garter stitch and I used 3 needle bind off on the underarm insted of kitchener. There were holes on either side of the join that had to be stitched up but they would have been there with the kitchener stitch too.

(I hope you all don't mind looking at a bit of sewing!)
Then the other day we went to JoAnne's Fabrics because my M-in-L had gotten me a Yarn-tainer for my birthday and I decided I wouldn't use it. So I wanted to exchange it for something. I found the pre-smocke/elasticized fabric for making quick sun dresses there. I know another poster here made these for her daughters. Anyway the fabric was 39 cents an inch. The blue/green was 40% off. So with the return of the yarn tainer and the one color on sale I got enough fabric for two quick sun dresses for $7.85. Deal of the century! 4 hours later, including time to wash and dry the fabric, my daughter had two new sun dresses. She is a very girly girl so she is crazy about these.

I have started a pink shrug now for the hot pink one and have a plan in my head to make a different shrug for the other one....

So here is my daughter modeling these creations:

[ctmax]

Everything looks so good. I the sundresses. Your daughter looks very happy with them.

[AmandaC]

I'm not a big pink person but I that pink sundress material .... do you do them in adult sizes

[shelleyj3]

Just beautiful! Everything turned out so cute! Cute model, too!

[newamy]

AmandaC wrote:

.... do you do them in adult sizes

Yes the fabric is very long, and could easily make an adult dres. I had to cut quite a bit off for my daughter, and there are a variety of colors. I used what I cut for shoulder straps, an adult may have to add ribbon or some other material unless they cut quite a bit of length off. You just measure you bust size and buy that many inches of the fabric. The picture on the bolt of fabric showed the elastisized portion with details and shaping for an adult figure- but I'm not that good a sewer to figure out how to do that.

[sara_jayne]

That knitted top is just beautiful!

Paisley is one of my favorite fabric designs! The dresses look wonderful!

[nuknitter]

Those are FABuLOUS, dahling! I can tell she just adores them too

So I'm guessing the pre-smocked fabric only comes in certain prints, and that if you want to make a garment w/non-smocked fabric with the same print they'll have it? Just curious, haven't heard 'bout the pre-smocked fabric until this forum recently.

ETA: I think I just got it f/your last post - so the pre-smocked fabric is a PART of the whole piece, not separate f/the non-smocked, right? *sigh* I'll just get over to JoAnne's to take a look... temptation city!

BTW, looks like she could wear the Reef sweater over the blue dress too!

[Abbily]

Gorgeous!! I love the sweater and the dresses!! I'm the one that did the pre-smocked dresses for my girls- at my Joann they actually had two different 'widths' of the fabric- so the wider fabric would make longer, I guess adult-sized dresses. We got the narrower fabric, and still had to cut off several inches since my girls are so young. Anyway yours look great, and your daughter is beautiful!!

[newamy]

nuknitter wrote:

BTW, looks like she could wear the Reef sweater over the blue dress too!

That was my original plan but the top little ruffle on the dress makes a ridge across the front of the sweater and it looks really dumb when she wears it layered. I think this is because the Shine drapes so softly that any underlying thing is picked up. A "stiffer" textured yarn probably wouldn't do that but then you wouldn't put it over a sundress either. Oh well, best laid plans and all that.

Abbily wrote

I'm the one that did the pre-smocked dresses for my girls-

Well I'm glad you had posted about them because when I went to JoAnne's the other day I had it in mind to look for that fabric and then there it was! Otherwise I never would have sought it out.

Thanks to everyone for the nice comments.

[aprilbetty]

Love the dresses and the sweater! And your daughter is lovely! I have two daughters, now both in their mid thirties, and I made the "smocked" sundresses for them 25 years ago! I had no idea that the fabric was still available.