Gemma 
My cousin recently became a dad (exciting!) so I thought I’d knit a little something for his new baby! Part of the way through knitting this project, I realised this was actually my first time making baby clothes, which is kind of crazy because I’m forever saving baby patterns on Ravelry/Instagram!
Anyway, as it turns out, knitting clothes for babies is very similar to knitting clothes for adults: just smaller (and cuter). I’ve been following Ann-Kathrin Stoll on Instagram for a while now and I’ve been working up the courage to try out one of her adult designs (not that they all seem crazy challenging or anything— I’m just bad at committing to large projects!) and when I saw her design for the Babybearsweater, I fell in love, so this felt like the perfect opportunity to give it a go!
In this post, as always with my 'Making a...' series, I'll be chatting about my experience making this pattern, as well as detailing any changes/adaptations I made. If you want to make your own Babybearsweater, you can purchase the pattern from Ann-Kathrin Stoll on Ravelry here!
Table of Contents
The Pattern
The Babybearsweater is a sweet little jumper, knitted in two colours and featuring ribbed cuffs/hems, a double-knitted button band and, as the name suggests, the CUTEST bear design!
I made the 6-9 months size, because I figured then the baby could grow into it over time and hopefully get a little more wear out of it? I won’t lie though, it seems quite… large? Then again, I don’t have much experience with 6-9 month old babies (read: I have no experience with 6-9 month old babies)…
To create the bear design, you use a combination of intarsia in the round (something I didn’t actually think was possible, but the technique is explained really well in this pattern!), embroidery/duplicate stitch and some partly-double-knitted ears, which give the bear face more of a 3D effect.
There were loads of different, new-to-me techniques in this jumper, but it still felt really fun and not too overwhelming to knit. It was a great project to challenge myself a little, learn some new techniques and practise some old ones! I really enjoyed it.
The Yarn
I used DROPS Baby Merino for this project, in the shades Wheat (59) and Beige (17) and met gauge with the suggested needles (3.00mm).
The Beige shade was exactly the shade I was looking for: a warm, but not-too-warm, soft brown colour. The Wheat shade, on the other hand, was not what I was hoping for: it was a much cooler tone than I had hoped (which I thought was kind of odd, given that it was called wheat? I mean, wheat is golden, right?), so I think I might have been better off going for the shade Off White (02), instead.
DROPS Baby Merino: Mini Review
DROPS Baby Merino is a sport-weight, 100% wool yarn that is sold in 50g balls. As is usually the case with DROPS, it’s pretty affordable, so I figured it was a good choice for a baby jumper!
Apart from the aforementioned colour-naming issues (I’m still stewing about the whole ‘Wheat‘ thing), I actually really like this yarn. It’s soft (though, admittedly, not the softest) without being overly fluffy, which is something I really like in a yarn. That does mean, however, that there isn’t really anything to hide behind: slightly uneven stitches/colourwork sections do show up with this yarn! My jumper’s pretty neat, but I think it could be even neater if I knitted it in a slightly less smooth yarn?
The yarn is really nice to knit with: very smooth and not at all hard on the hands. I’d definitely use it again!
Other Materials
As well as the two shades of yarn, you also need 2 x 10mm buttons (for the button band on the shoulder), some scrap, black yarn for embroidering the face and some thread for sewing on the buttons.
Like many knitters/crafters/humans, we have a miscellaneous button box in our house, so I just rifled through that until I found these little coconut shell buttons. I wanted something quite rustic, to match the brown bear, and I thought these were perfect. It wasn’t at all tricky to find a thread colour that matched the Wheat yarn (I already had one on hand!).
We also have copious amounts of scrap yarn in this house, so it wasn’t too tricky to find a sport-weight black yarn for the bear’s face.
The Knitting Process
Into the knitting of the jumper itself now and, I have to say, I actually really loved knitting this project! I did run into a few problems here and there, and there were times when I struggled to understand the pattern, but, on the whole, I really enjoyed the process and it was a fun, semi-challenging project to take on.
Cast-On
The pattern doesn’t specify what kind of cast-on to use, which is not a huge deal, but, as I’ve mentioned before, I do like to be spoon-fed when it comes to knitting patterns (I get major decision anxiety and I’m still not confident enough in my cast-on repertoire to know what’s the best fit for which project!).
Ultimately, I just used a regular, cable cast-on for all of the casting-on throughout the pattern and it worked well, so I’m just running with that.
Edge Stitches
Okay, this was something that really confused me about this pattern: there’s a whole instruction for ‘edge stitches’, but, from what I can tell, it’s no different from just knitting/purling the first/last stitches on the knit/purl rows? There isn’t really any textured knitting going on in the pattern, other than the ribbed hems/cuffs, so the whole time I was making this jumper, I was waiting for the penny to drop so that I could FINALLY understand what this instruction was for but it just… never did?
This might just be a knitting convention that I’ve never seen before, but I don’t think it was a necessary addition to this pattern and, honestly, it just made the pattern more confusing for me!
Intarsia in the Round
This was the most significant new technique in this project for me: partly because I didn’t even know this was possible and partly because the instructions for the intarsia section are… long. I’m talking pages of row-by-row pattern, which, although slightly overwhelming at first, was actually quite nice to work from (as I said, I like to be spoon-fed my patterns).
I did try to read through the pattern ahead of time and visualise what was going on, but I eventually just decided that I’d have to try it to understand it, which worked much better! Going in blind was a bit scary, but the instructions were so detailed that I could just follow them and watch it all work out.
I did get into a little bit of a pickle towards the end of the intarsia, which my mum (very kindly and rather painstakingly) managed to pretty much fix for me, but it did require a little bit of fudging at the sewing up stage to even it out. I’d tell you what I did, but, honestly, I have no idea, so I think I’ll just have to work through the last few rows of the intarsia very slowly if I make this again!
I did enjoy this colourwork method: I think it’s very effective and, despite the complicated instructions, was deceptively simple. The only thing I’m not 100% about is the fact that, on my jumper, at least, you can see some of the muzzle colour in the brown section to the right of the muzzle, which makes it look a little messy there. Maybe that’s something I could avoid with more practice? Or perhaps that’s just another downside to using such a smooth yarn?
Italian Bind-Off
This was my first time working an Italian Bind-Off and I really liked it! Especially after the tedious amount of tubular binding-off I had to do for my Braidy Loop Sweater, which I really didn’t enjoy, this version felt much less laborious (even though, as bind-offs go, it still takes a bit of effort).
The pattern suggests a YouTube video tutorial for the Italian Bind-Off, but I tend to prefer working from written tutorials (just personal preference!), so I found this one online that I found really helpful:
https://www.interweave.com/article/knitting/how-to-italian-bind-off-ribbing-brioche/
Ears
The bear’s ears are knit directly onto the jumper, which I think gives a super neat (and secure, which is important for a baby sweater!) finish. The pattern includes a super helpful schematic that shows you exactly wear to work the ears which really satisfied my aforementioned spoon-feeding preferences.
The ears were a little fiddly to work up (you start by double-knitting them, then split them onto two needles and work them in the round), but that’s mainly because they’re so small. They look super neat when they’re finished, so I definitely think they’re worth it!
Neckband
The neckband is just worked in regular rib, so it was pretty standard! The only problem I ran into here was the suggested pick-up rate, which I found wasn’t quite right for my size.
In the end, I picked up 1 st out of 2 rows for the left front slant and 2 sts out of 3 rows for the right front slant to get the necessary stitch count.
I also showed my inexperience and started picking up at the wrong place, so it took me a couple of attempts to get this right (sigh). I still haven’t quite got to grips with the whole left/right side ‘as the jumper is worn’ convention, which is unfortunate, given it is an extremely common one!
Button Band
I’ve actually never knitted a button band before, so this was another first for me! I thought the method for attaching the band to the knitted piece was SO clever, so I really enjoyed this part of the process (and, as an added bonus, because it’s so small it went super quickly, which was extra fun!).
My only problem with the button band was that it ended up with a lot of yarn ends to darn in, which actually filled me with terror and led to me putting off sewing in the ends and finishing this project for weeks. In the end, it wasn’t as bad as I expected, but I still wonder if there is a less end-heavy method to making a button band?
When it came time to sew the buttons on, I used sewing thread, so that I could make it really neat and secure. I laid the button bands over each other, as they would be once closed, and marked where the buttons needed to go, to ensure everything would fit together perfectly. I sewed through the holes of the buttons a number of times, then wrapped the thread around the base of the button a good few times to form a ‘shaft’ for extra strength, before pushing the needle through that shaft and sewing in the end. This was a technique my mum showed me and the buttons do feel very secure, so I think it’s a good one!
Sleeves
The sleeves were pretty simple, with basic decreases, which was a nice break after the more complex button band.
However, I do think there is an error in the pattern at this point: in the paragraph after Round 2, for the third size (which I made), it states that 63 rows should have been worked, but I think this number should be 56 (I think the number for the second size might also be wrong?). It doesn’t really matter, but it did throw me for a loop for a second there!
Embroidering the Face
Embroidering the face was actually a really simple experience: mainly because of how clear and detailed the instructions were. My aforementioned love of spoon-feeding really came into its own here: the pattern explains exactly where to stitch on the eyes and nose, as well as how to position the mouth. It doesn’t specify using duplicate stitch, but I think that is what is used for the eyes/nose. I used a regular back stitch for the mouth.
The mouth was probably the trickiest part (just getting the right curve— I was going for cute, not Joker), but even that wasn’t too difficult (even if the mouth here is giving me major vibes of this emoji: 😏).
Sewing in the ends of the embroidery section was a bit fiddly, mainly because I wanted to keep the black ends super neat, because they stand out against the cream/brown yarn so much! I think I probably could have done a better job, but, at the same time, it’s on the inside, so I guess it doesn’t really matter!
Final Thoughts
I can definitely see myself making this pattern again, even without the bear intarsia pattern, just as a plain jumper (though the bear is, obviously, the cutest thing in the whole wide world)!
I thought the pattern as a whole was very clear and, as I said, I really enjoyed working from it and making this project. It was on the more challenging side for me, but it was an achievable challenge that I really enjoyed. In particular, I found the schematics at the end of the pattern very helpful, especially for the ear/face placement (once I realised there were different schematics for the different sizes, anyway…). I also think the finished product is SO CUTE, which is all I really wanted anyway!
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about my experience making this Babybearsweater! Have you ever worked intarsia in the round? Let me know in the comments below!
If you're interested...
You can buy the Babybearsweater pattern on Ravelry here.
You can find my Baby Bear Sweater project page on Ravelry here.
Gemma
xxx
