As much as we all love the Baby Surprise Jacket, has it occurred to anyone but me that despite the delightful-ness of the sweater it could use one little improvement…longer sleeves. I’ve always had issue with 3/4 sleeves of any kind (child or adult garments). So I sat down and thought about it for a while and understood what I wanted to do but just couldn’t get my mind around how to carry it out. Then, thanks to the brilliant mind of a Raveler (I was too lazy to trace the thread to find out who) I discovered this.
With the use of a simple provisional cast on (take your pick…I choose a crochet provisional) you can work the entire garment then go back, pick up the sleeve stitches and knit away to your desired length. To finish it off I would sew the sleeves together using an invisible seam for garter stitch (from the book The Knitter’s Companion), stop at the neck edge and do a sewn off bind off (as seen on the Knitting Glossary DVD by Elizabeth Zimmermann) then continue across with the invisible seaming on the other sleeve.
Here’s my crochet provisional cast on.
As you can see I’ve already started picking up the sleeve stitches…
For the observant among you, I was on the wrong side of the sweater in the picture above that’s why it looks like I’m on other sleeve in this picture. I also took these pictures at different times of the day…sorry for the terrible lighting.
The safety pin marks the pick up row…pretty smooth transition…
At the end of the day the sweater was too small…I safety pinned it together and tried it on Kira. It fits her but only for another five minutes. It won’t even take her through the fall. So I will rip but not without a sense of accomplishment.
Oh, the other thing I did was cast on the extra 18 stitches (9 on each side) usually added a few rows into the sweater to add fullness above the cuff. Toward the end of the sleeve I was going to decrease by 9 stitches for the same effect.
Another possibility, or addition if you’d like, is that many have put ribbing on the sleeves because they like tighter cuffs.
Even better: with the particular provisional you used, the baby could wear it as-is when very small, and then you could pull it out and lengthen the sleeves as she grew! I’ve seen many others just pick up stitches and lengthen the sleeves, but your way is tidier and very appealing.