There are a few considerations to designing for children which differ from designing for adults, but it's SO much fun.
Fiber
No matter how confident you are about selecting yarn for a project, it seems that when the time comes to knit a child’s garment all sorts of yarn deliberations surface.
The yarn needs to be soft against the skin, so the baby isn’t fussy when wearing it.
It should be easy to launder.
A hypoallergenic fiber would be nice to avoid allergic reactions.
If it wears well over time, it can be passed down to other generations.
Fingering or sport weight garments have a thin, pliable feel to them that makes dressing little ones easy and aren’t too bulky for indoor wear.
Bright colored yarns look good on children and give a playful look. Darker colors hide stains better.
When selecting a fiber, 100% superwash wool is especially beneficial if the garment is a gift to non-knitting parents who have no desire to hand wash and lay flat to dry anything. Superwash wool is more forgiving during the laundering process but it’s not foolproof. If any of you have had a superwash sweater grow enormously out of shape while washing, you know the pains of getting it back to its original shape. If that adorable cardigan is going to end up with sleeves that need to be rolled up to the elbows and a lopsided shape after the first wash, then it was really only adorable before washing. Another slight issue with superwash wools is that a fair amount of dye may come out during the wash so parents may tend to shy away from putting a garment so saturated with dye against a baby’s skin. This depends on the yarn of course.
If you’re looking for a hypoallergenic yarn, cotton is a popular choice for baby garments. It is soft, can be laundered easily and is breathable. Many yarns marketed for baby/children garment are a blend of cotton and acrylic which adds a little elasticity and makes a garment that is easy to care for. Acrylic is hypoallergenic for most people. Bamboo is another great option, and you’ll often see bamboo blended with wool or cotton. Look for natural fibers like cotton, wool or linen, and organic yarns with a GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standards) certification.
Stitch Patterns
Lace, cables, textures, stockinette, garter stitch, stranded colorwork, and intarsia are all used in children’s garments, but look a little closer when selecting stitches for your next children’s design. Avoid large lacy holes that little ones can poke fingers through. If using lace stitches, use smaller needles and light weight yarn to keep the holes a smaller, more manageable size or spread out the yarn overs by putting them only on the right-side rows. If you’re using yarn overs on both the right and wrong-side rows, can you spread them out instead of stacking them one on top of another as you would in faggoting or mesh? Aim for smaller, fewer holes. Avoid mesh.
Avoid thick cables or cable crossings that are so close together that they create a rigid garment. Keep cables soft so they bend with fabric. Avoid cables, bobbles or knots on the back of baby garments since babies are lying on their backs a lot and it’s just not comfortable.
Design Elements
Now is the time to pair your artistic vision with practicality. My four “self-imposed rules” for designing for babies and children are: 1) keep it easy, 2) keep it safe, 3) keep it comfortable, and 4) keep it practical.
Keep it Easy for Parents (and grandparents!)
Garment Length - Keep garments shorter so they fit with bulky diapers. It’s much easier if the sweater falls just above the widest part of the diaper instead of trying to button a garment around the diaper.
Number of Buttons - Cardigans with only one, two or three buttons at the top are good for babies and toddlers since it allows the cardigan to fan open at the bottom. This allows room for the diaper and for crawling and kicking. If you like the look of a button band with evenly spaced buttons top to bottom, think about spacing them closer together so if a parent wishes to only button the top 3 buttons and leave the rest unbuttoned, it will still look nice and be functional.
Necklines - Babies have big heads! The head circumference of a baby is 14-16” and by the time they’re toddlers is 16-18” compared to adult women at 21-23”. Yes, a newborn baby’s head is only 5” less than an adult. Pullovers can make dressing difficult. As a designer, designing a garment that needs to fit over a big head but also fit around a small neck and shoulders can be challenging. Some solutions are to design one shoulder seamed and the other shoulder buttoned to make dressing easier. When designing the button band for the buttoned shoulder, place buttons slightly down the front about an inch instead of sitting directly on top of the shoulder to make it more comfortable to wear.
Another solution is to keep the neckline on pullovers stretchy. Ribbing is good especially when used with a tubular cast on or bind off. Garter stitch stretches so it’s excellent for neckbands and cuffs. When writing the pattern, recommend a stretchy cast on or bind off when needed. Old Norwegian Cast On is a slightly stretchier version of the basic Long Tail Cast On, which knitters may not readily think of. Even if you only put a note in your pattern to “CO using a slightly stretchy cast on like Old Norwegian Cast On or similar” you’ll help set up the knitter for a successful finished garment.
Cardigans - These solve the big head dilemma and make great choices for babies and children since they are easy to get on and off. As children start to dress themselves, many have no issues putting on a cardigan yet struggle with pullovers.
Sleeves - Just like necklines, keep the cuffs stretchy. Imagine a balled-up fist jerking as you’re trying to put a small arm into a sleeve. Sleeves may not need tapering at all, or very little. Keep the sleeves roomy and the cuffs a little wider than you normally would. Depending on the size, you may only have three or four increases or decreases along a sleeve for shaping between cuff and upper arm.
Keep it Safe
Avoid mesh or patterns with large sections of lacy holes that are worked closely together with few knit or purl stitches in between.
With Fair Isle or any type of stranded knitting, keep the floats short so little fingers can’t get caught in them.
Avoid ties like twisted ties, I-cord, ribbons, or anything that can get caught around the baby’s neck. Ribbons in bonnets that can be pulled out, usually end up in the baby’s mouth and can lead to choking. If using a ribbon or tie, sew the ribbon in one place to the bonnet to keep it from coming out. Drawstring hoods are best used with older children. If you want to put a tie or cord in a baby’s garment, do sew it in and leave only enough length so it can be tied with short ends.
Sew buttons on firmly. Take the yarn or thread through the buttonhole and band a few more times than normal. Many children’s garments use cute, unique buttons that aren’t easily replaceable if lost so giving the parent an extra button is often appreciated.
Keep it Comfortable
Use more ease than you would for an adult garment. Babies wiggle a lot and a roomy sweater feels better than a snug one. Start with actual body measurements either from taking the measurements of the child or using industry standards like ASTM tables or Craft Yarn Council charts. Both of these list the actual body measurements, before ease is added. More ease around the chest allows the child to grow and still be able to fit into the sweater so you’ll extend the wearing time. More ease around the upper arm and sleeve cuffs makes it easier to dress.
Avoid seams, if possible, especially if the garment will be worn next to the skin. Since children’s garments are smaller, the back and fronts of a cardigan can easily be worked flat in one piece without side seams.
Necklines around children’s garments are normally kept on the slim side, so if stability isn’t an issue (and with smaller garments it usually isn’t), consider placing neck stitches on a holder for bottom-up garments, then working the neckband from live stitches instead of binding off and picking up stitches. For top-down garments, cast on using a provisional cast on then go back and work the neckline.
As with everything in design, designers need to weigh the best technique with the difficulty level. If a provisional cast on is more advanced than you wish your pattern to be, then use a simpler cast on and pick up stitches. There is not one hard and fast rule, only a lot of design elements to consider. Think about the problem and solution, then ask yourself if the solution makes the pattern better or more difficult. Be honest about the difficulty level of the techniques you’re incorporating and compare them to the overall difficulty level you’re wishing to achieve for your pattern.
Keep it Practical
Sleeve lengths vary greatly between children so consider designing a reversible cuff that can be folded back on itself or lengthened. Keep this in mind when you weave in ends for the cuff and keep them as tidy as you can.
Weave in ends using duplicate stitch. A protruding yarn end that is popping out will for sure catch the eye of a toddler who can’t resist to tug it.
If designing an intarsia project, carefully look at the number and size of each color section and see if you can use fewer, larger sections. The fewer ends a knitter needs to weave in, the sturdier the garment will be.
More About Buttons
With smaller garments come smaller buttons so the holes in a button may be too small for a tapestry needle and yarn to fit through. Use a sewing needle and thread that is strong like a heavy-duty thread or thread labelled “button and carpet.” With novelty buttons, match the sewing thread to the button instead of the garment so it blends in better. In this photo, the white thread is not as distracting to the sailboat as a red thread would have been.
Make sure the buttons are machine washable and dryer safe. With the disappearance of fabric stores, many knitters are buying buttons at craft stores. Buttons for machine-wash garments are different from buttons used for scrapbooking or other crafts. You don’t want the buttons to melt, crack, or have the painted design wash off onto the garment. When listing buttons in your pattern, you may want to specify “machine washable buttons.” Buttons with smooth, round edges are much easier to navigate through a buttonhole than cut out shapes. If you want a button that looks like a butterfly for example, see if you can find an etched or painted butterfly inside a round button rather than a button shaped like a butterfly. As a designer, the buttons you use on your sample may affect a knitter’s shopping choices so make sure you’re displaying a good option.
By working through some of these design issues in advance, you’re increasing your odds of designing a garment that will be appreciated by parents, worn well by children, and last over time. Simply being a knitter puts you in a special limelight with new parents so even if you don’t have children, having a hand-knit baby garment knit is always a useful gift.
Find the pattern for Barrington Cardigan here.
References
Gathered, What to Knit for Babies. https://www.gathered.how/knitting-and-crochet/knitting/baby-knits/
Threads Monthly, 21 Types of Sewing Thread & When to Use Them. https://threadsmonthly.com/sewing-thread-types-uses/
Craft Yarn Council Baby Size Charts:
Craft Yarn Council Youth Size Charts:
ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials):
Commentaires