Claret Baby Dress, Bonnet & Bootees

Sales from the shop have been incredibly slow, views are down and I'm feeling a little despondent.  In a bid to increase views and interest in my shop I have decided to try making lace baby items and see how it goes as a lower price point product in my shop.

I inherited a lot of baby knitting patterns when my mother passed away years ago and so I trawled through them looking for anything pretty that fitted the lace theme of my shop.  Most of these patterns are vintage now, she hadn't knitted in years and my nephews who she did knit for are in their late 20's/early 30's with families of their own.

I fell in love with a pattern for a little baby dress, bonnet and bootees and thought I'd give it a try to see how it came out.  It is supposed to have embroidered flowers on the yoke but I decided to use ribbon roses and sew them on in a way that means I also sew through the ribbon so it won't unravel.

Seeing as it is for a baby and baby's make a lot of mess I decided to dig out some of the acrylic yarn that I have sitting at the back of all my lovely pure wool yarns.   I don't want to make it in white either.  Every Tom, Dick and Harry make baby clothes in white, lemon, pink and blue.  Bold colours for me, something different on offer from me.

This is a dark red / claret / burgundy colour yarn in a light fingering weight and I have about 200g/1150m of it.

I forgot to take work-in-progress photos so unfortunately I don't have any of those to show you but I can show you the finished product.  I was a little worried about the placement of the ribbon on the hat as the pattern doesn't give you any instructions regarding this and I don't have any babies to try it on, nor do my girls have any dolls that I could use, they don't have any dolls at all as neither of them are girly girls.

I guess the ribbon on the hat must have been OK as this was sold to a buyer in the USA, who gifted it to the parents of a new born baby and I've not had any complaints.