The Bunting

I have had several people ask me for the pattern to the baby bunting. Well, I never wrote one. The section below is the closest that I can come to letting you know how to do the bunting. Remember this is a combination loomed knitted, needle knitted, and crocheted piece. In this close up you can see the knitted front panel and see how much different it is then the body section.




The bunting has no pattern as such. I winged it to make that and it
is not all loomed. It is a combination loomed body, needle knitted
flaps, and crocheted edging. I can tell you how I did it but that is
all. If you work in skeins you will need four of them. I worked in
cakes and wound four. Two are for the start two are for the front
opening as additional for working two sections at once.

The body was started at the back top shoulders using a 36" large
gauged loom with a double strand of worsted weight in stockinette
stitch. I don't remember the amount of pegs I used but it wasn't the
whole loom. You knit till you have it as long as you want it to the
bottom edge. Then continue to knit for a few inches, this is the
turning for the bottom to make it completely closed.

Then you start the rest of the front section. Wrap only half the pegs
with the current working yarn. Now attach the second two skeins to
the second half of the stitches. Wrap the pegs on the second
section. You are now going to continue wrapping each half
speperately. This makes the front split section. Work till you meet
the top of the back side. I never worried about keeping track of
inches or rows, so this is all just basic guides. Anyway, when the
front sections meet the top, make sure you still have that closed in
bottom, then finish off.

Now choose which side you want for the right side and which for the
wrong side. With the wrong side out sew (I whipstitched) the sides
together and the shoulder area. Here you have to leave a the middle
section of the back and part of the inside section of each flap
unworked, this area is for the hat.

For the hat work a rectangle piece, again I do not remember amount of
pegs or rows done. The rectangle piece is to be folded in half with
the top or bind off row being the front edge of the hat, the bottom
edge (starting edge) is to be whipped stitched together to close it,
the sides are then eased in to the opening of the body.

From here on the looming part was done. I don't know if you needle
knit but here is what I did. I picked up stitches along one edge of
the opening using large knitting needles (a size 13 or 15 is good),
then I knitted one side to be the button in a very plain stitch. The
other side I made a bit fancier adding button holes up the center of
the flap.

The final part was that I crocheted around the entire flaps and hat
protion. The bottom of the flaps section and where the opening of the
bottom is, where you start the seperate work, needs a little extra
crochet work to round off this section and reinforce the strength
there.

I added buttons and a crochet tie for the hat (the hat portion of
crochet is a simple chain three, single crochet around it so that
there is a section to weave the crochet chain into).

Well, that's it. Someday I want to do another but on a regular gauged
loom and keep track of what I am doing. I want to make one that is
all loomed except for maybe the crocheted edge.