Tee

Today I would like to highlight the final pattern in The Knit Cafe’s Wee Collection Fall 2014. It’s called Tee!

It’s a small size t-shirt, to fit baby and up to 3-years in size. Knit in organic cotton it is meant to be casual and comfortable, the polka dot embellishment is meant to be a whole lot of fun!

This is the front!

This is the back!

You may add the polka dots where you will as they are added on after with a marvelous and easy technique called duplicate stitch.

Duplicate Stitch is a wonderful way to add coloured embellishments to your knitted garments.  It is more akin to an embroidery than a knitting technique and is so simple and fun to do. I will demonstrate in the form of a tutorial!

DUPLICATE STITCH TUTORIAL

You will need: a darning needle, and contrast colour yarn in the same thickness as the yarn you used to knit your garment, and sharp scissors too.

Cut a piece of yarn. The length of which will depend on how large an area you intend to cover, tempered by how long a piece you can handle pulling up through your work repetitively without getting tangled up. It takes approximately 147cm length of yarn to make a polka dot but we made each polka dot with two separate lengths of yarn. We started with a piece of yarn about 80cm long.

Thread your yarn on your darning needle and thread it through your knit fabric just under the stitch you intend to cover. Duplicate stitch is always worked over stocking stitch so each stitch will resemble a V in shape.  The needle will come up at the base of the V, shown here with a  red dot!
Leave a length of yarn on the reverse side of the fabric which is long enough to darn into your work once you are finished the duplicate stitching.

Next, thread your yarn through the stitch above the stitch you intend to cover.  The needle goes under one arm of the V and through the other arm.  See illustration above.

Then insert your needle through the original spot where your yarn first appeared.  Pull just so that the yarn covers the stitch, not so tight that it puckers the fabric and shows the stitch underneath and not so loose that it looks untidy.

To place a duplicate stitch beside the one you just finished, bring your needle up under the base of the V beside the stitch you just covered (indicated with blue dot) and repeat the steps above.

Or you can place a stitch above the duplicate stitch you just completed by bringing your needle up under the base of the V above the completed duplicate stitch as shown by the blue dot in the diagram.

Repeat as necessary to finish your polka dot or whatever pattern you fancy.

We used Anzula’s Mini Skeins in For Better or Worsted yarn to make our polka dots. One skein in each of the 3 colours was plenty to make the polka dots we required. Hooray for mini skeins!

Other patterns in the Wee Collection Fall 2014 are Baby Harem.  and Tremblant Blanket and Bunting for Beginners too. You can see all The Knit Cafe’s Pattern on our Ravelry Page HERE.

Craftily yours
Kristin