Baby Yoga Pants

I am always looking for a knitting pattern that is not too complicated, not too big, and that someone will actually use or wear. I can figure out complicated, but I prefer projects that do not take forever to finish, and that I can do while watching TV.

The teacher of the machine knitting class at the School of Sweet Georgia, Barb Barone, told me about a Baby Yoga Pants pattern. She suggested it could be adapted for machine knitting, but I thought it was a good hand knitting project to make for my granddaughter.

Nora doesn’t do yoga LOL, but I thought they were cute, and a fun knitting project that would not take too long to complete.

I wanted to make the baby pants in yarn that would be practical, comfortable and washable. I didn’t have anything on hand, so I ordered two skeins of machine washable Berroco Vintage, a wool, acrylic, and nylon blend worsted weight yarn. The color is “rhubarb”, like the color of the skein below, rather than the purple in some of the other photos.

The pattern starts at the waist. For the girls version you can add a row of picot edging at the place where the top is folded over for the waistband. After knitting the right number of rows, you knit the cast on row in with the current row, making a seamless join with a casing for a tie or elastic around the waist. This is the same as a hung hem at the top of circular sock machine socks. It is easier on the CSM.

The number of stitches around stays the same as you knit the waistband. When I was ready to join the cast on edge to make the casing, I ended up with fewer cast on stitches picked up than the live stitches on the needles. I figured I could fudge it and it would be OK. Also, I was not sure that the picot edge was coming out in the right place exactly at the top, even though I had carefully counted rows. I forged ahead despite these concerns. The photo below shows the gap where the cast on edge is folded over and joined, with fewer cast on stitches.

The pants were knitting up pretty fast. After getting about an inch past the join, I changed my mind and decided to rip that part out and do it over again, making sure my cast on stitches matched up. I picked up stitches from a row before the picot edge and ripped everything out to that row.

I decided not to do the picot edge at the top on the re-do, because then it did not matter exactly how many rows there were for the casing. I was in the Twin Cities over the Thanksgiving weekend while working on this, so I had some time in the car and sitting around to work on it that I would not have had at home. It did not take long to catch up to where I had been, and get even farther along in the pattern.

After the waistband and a few more rows, there were some short rows to add shaping in the bum to make room for a diaper.

Stitches are added in the middle on the front and back for a crotch gusset. Each leg is knit in the round.

I checked the pattern for how many leg rows to knit. It said to knit for 14 inches from the top of the waist. With my gauge of six rows per inch, 14 inches came out to 84 rows. Somehow I got mixed up (me?) and got in my head that the leg would be 84 rows long. When the leg was about eight inches long, something did not seem right. The entire thing was supposed to be 14″, not just the leg. I had a couple of extra inches of leg, according to the pattern. It would not be very hard to frog off the extra leg rows, but at this point I wanted to do a little research. I put the project aside until I could figure it out.

At Walmart a few days later I looked at three different size 12 month pants to get measurements of the circumference, the bum section and the legs. Back at home I compared those measurements to the pants in progress. Lucky me, I was actually pretty close after all. Nora was long at birth, so it seemed like the pants would work as is.

The next step was knitting an optional ruffly border at the bottom of the first leg, and then casting off.

After knitting the second leg, the last step was grafting together the gusset area in the crotch.

The pants looked nice after adding elastic in the waist and steaming.

The pants were supposed to be size 12 months. Nora was about 8 months at the time of the following photo. They stretched up into a costume for an ABBA concert.

Later Kelsey sent me the following photos of Blair, age 2 1/2, wearing the pants. She is large for her age. The bum part fit better, but they were capris on her. Not sure if she just got out of the bathtub or what!

Maybe the pants will fit Nora in a couple of months. They were fun to knit, and I hope someone can wear them some time. I would knit this pattern again, but maybe make the legs longer in proportion to the rest, or the waist part shorter, or at least compare the measurements to the recipient while the project was in process.

I was working on this project in December which seems like ages ago now. We have been in Arizona since the beginning of January. James and Kelsey and the granddaughters, plus Britta and Isaac, are coming to visit soon. I doubt the yoga pants will be in the suitcase. The weather here has been much warmer than what we have experienced before, so I expect the swimming pool at their Airbnb will get a lot of use.