I know I’m supposed to be finishing my WIPS but I wanted to make a little gift for my colleague, Manuel, for his impending first child, due in a couple of weeks. I kinda get the impression the baby is not going to wait for me to finish my WIPs so that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.

Making baby clothes is OK but I find it frustrating that they grow out of them so fast. And often I think, new parents are overwhelmed with “new born” gifts. All this is my way of explaining why I like to make Baby Bibs in Rowan Handknit Cotton. They are fun to make (selfish me!!) and I’m told by some of the recipients, useful, durable, machine washable and still in use a year later!

I quite enjoy making these bibs and  got carried away and made five  😀

Do you think Manuel and his wife will like them?

They are from a favorite cute little pattern I first made back in 2008, here –>> Baby Blue Bib

The pattern is  from  Leigh Radford’s “One Skein” book

I actually made four of these for an old boss  in 2008 but never got around to blogging them (Tsk! Susan)…

Four more bibs!

The pattern is quite tricksy and has 15 ends to sew in (gluton for end sewing punishment aren’t I?). I used an ancient old set of 8″ 4mm metal DPNs to make these. It’s handy to have a spare needle for the petals as you make them and to use the dpns for the Icord.

First you make the bottom of each petal separately (I made the petals in the order they were needed and put them on a spare DPN – 2 large petals + 1 small + 2 large). and then knit and purl rows  across them. Then the fun start…. The shape is achieved by short row shaping – lots of wrapping and turning along with som P3Tog to give those bumps delineating the petals.

It’s very clearly laid out in the pattern but you do have to watch what you are doing.

Once you’ve done that, make and Icord which is knit onto the live stitches at the top of the bib as you knit. I like this as there are no loose dangly bits for a baby to swallow if they decide to have a chew on the ties.

I was a little frustrated though that each bib took just OVER half a ball of Rowan Handknit cotton. I had a lot of part balls left over…

I hunted all the completed bibs on Ravelry for ideas and found some people who had done a contrasting Icord, which did look cute. Less successfully there were some the did the first part of the petals in one colour, then changed for the body of the bib. Because of the short rows this was a bit angular to my eyes. What to do?

I seemed obvious to me to try and intarsia each petal in a different colour – surely someone else had done that? It seems not – not on Ravelry anyway!

This was very fiddly to do and could probably be improved but I was quite pleased with myself!

Intarsiatastic!

Yes, I do like to make life difficult for myself 😉

Here’s a pic so you can compare the back of a “normal bib” and he back of my Intarsia attempt 🙂

Knowing what to do at the p3tog was the hard part!

These were a lot of fun and these bibs will be my go to for the next baby I want to knit for. But enough fun…back to those WIPs 🙁