Brodey's Baby Surprise Jacket

Yesterday was the big baby shower for Tiffany, she and my nephew Jamie are expecting a baby boy toward the end of summer. They're planning to name him Brodey, a very cute name though I have resisted embroidering it on the garment. I learned my lesson on personalizing baby gifts years ago when I was in high school. I put together a nice baby quilt for a family who's children I babysat. The mom and I were good friends and like to talk about gardening and art and she had lived in France, it was so fun to hear her stories. Back to the quilt, she'd told me the baby name she and her husband had decided on, which I embroidered along the top edge of the quilt in a nice script. After they came home from the hospital, when I went over to visit and to bring the gift I'd made...the baby had a completely different name! He went from a Jonathan to a Logan!


Here's Brodey's Baby Surprise jacket, all blocked with the buttons sewn on.


To make Brodey's jacket I used fiber from my favorite alpaca friend Sassafras. The light and medium fawn shades are so gorgeous. I spun some leaning toward the darker and some toward the lighter shades to give a nice variation within the sweater rather than blending them into one homogeneous color.


The predominant fiber for this project was naturally colored, but for a little punch I added some of my hand dyed fiber too, just an occasional row here and there. Pictured above is a dye blend I call Vintage Velvet Flowers, though it reads as a lot of purple and pink along with the blue while it is in loose fiber form, spun into yarn it reads predominantly as soft shades of blue. The other hand dyed I used was one I call Lake Michigan Summer, which is perfect for Jamie and Tiffany since they have a boat and spend a lot of time on the water at the cottage during the summer. For some more assertive accents I used naturally dark fiber from Sequoia, blended it makes a nice soft brown, and spinning the dark bits alone made a rich chocolate color. All very nice for a baby boy. I hope they enjoy the little jacket, which should fit him nicely by the time cool weather rolls around.

Have a great weekend! Blessings Friends!
Melissa