Yellow is on my mind these days, because Project Spectrum’s April colors are yellow and orange, and also because I’ve been working on an article about yellow for INKnitters off and on for months.
In the Project Spectrum spirit, I want to show you some yellow projects from my long needlework history. How long? I started knitting almost forty years ago. Yes, I do have a three-year-old daughter. Go figure.
Two little jumpers I designed for toddler girls were on the cover of Country Handcrafts in the Summer of 1994. My mom knitted the yellow one, and I did the blue one. The stitch pattern is “Mock Pleat,” probably from one of Barbara G. Walker’s knitting pattern treasuries. I’ll see if I can find the original magazine cover and post it here later.
For some reason related to our last move nearly three years ago, the yellow jumper was out on a pile of clothes I needed to put in storage. Then Ella, the three-year-old daughter I mentioned earlier, found it. She put it on. She loved it. It is too short to be a dress for her, but it makes the cutest top ever!
She wears it whenever it’s clean, with leggings or shorts. Very cute! And when it’s dirty, I pop it in the washer and dryer, because it is knitted of Red Heart acrylic. Great stuff. The article was “Sunny Knit Jumpers,” Country Handcrafts, pp. 6 ff., Summer 1994.
A beautiful magazine called American Handcrafts was published for a few years in the late 1970s. This top, embroidered in shades of blue, was on the cover of one issue. I loved it and made the blue version for my mom. I made the orange and yellow version for myself.
The designer planned the embroidery design to fit on the pieces of a blouse from a commercial sewing pattern available to sewists at the time. The embroidery was done first, and then the pieces sewn into a blouse. I still have the mag, so will post the designer’s name whenever I find it. (All my old magazines are stored away.)