11.05.2025

Some thoughts on how to machine-knit this baby dress

Positive aspects:
1. These two double-bed patterns are new to me. I haven’t seen them in the Passap pattern books so far, and they are both fully automatic and visually appealing.
2. Switching between the two patterns is easy, as the transfer from the first needle setup to the second is simple and quick.
3. The second pattern automatically narrows the width of the knitted piece, eliminating the need to rehang stitches to reduce their number for the upper part of the dress.
4. There’s no need for a seam at the bottom of the dress, as this double-bed tuck pattern lies completely flat and does not curl.
5. Since the width reduction from skirt to waist happens automatically, the waistline remains soft and stretchy, unlike the stiff and inelastic result you’d get from doubling stitches on one needle as required in stockinette.

Negative aspects:
1. A dress pattern like this, requiring a divided upper front section for a button band and neckline, means removing about half the work with open stitches and rehanging them later—this is particularly fiddly with double-bed tuck patterns.
2. Creating an overlapping welt for the button band requires casting on stitches that are difficult to weight, making them hard to knit evenly.
3. The stitch patterns are so beautiful and easy to knit that they tempt you to start right away, but the complicated front section soon becomes frustrating and laborious.
4. The pattern includes too many unnecessary increases and decreases at the waist and shoulders, significantly slowing down the knitting process.

My evaluation:
With the given instructions, the dress is unknittable for me—I dislike fiddly steps and unnecessary hand manipulation on the machine.

My plan:
I will knit the dress in a pinafore style: front and back worked as single, undivided panels with no shaping; the front slightly shorter than the back. I will hand-knit the neckline sections to join the shoulders and incorporate buttons, allowing for the necessary opening when dressing the child.

11.05.2025

Frogged the first piece as it was slightly too large for size 1½ to 2 years. Re-knitted the front and also the back, with the upper part of the back approximately 2 cm longer.

14.05.2025

In the end, I decided to finish the dress without buttons. Two small, narrow pieces in pattern 2, with reduced stitch size 4, join the back and front of the upper bodice and form the shoulders. To finish the neckline, I hand-knitted a few rows of curling stockinette in the round.

170 grams