Finished Friday – Bees

Bees Dress #1

On July 11, 2022 I saw the pattern “Bees in the Thistles Dress” by Bridget Pupillo for Knit Picks. It was WAY-TO-CUTE! I HAD to have it!! I ordered it that very day. It was the perfect dress to knit for my grand-daughter’s first birthday, on August 27th. I had plenty of time… (apparently I only mentioned it once)

It was so cute that I decided to make 2 additional dresses. One for my co-worker’s 3 year old daughter, Callie, and one for her 1 year old grand-daughter, Symphony. Can you say “over-achiever”? As soon as the yarn arrived on July 29th, I got busy knitting the first dress.

The color-work was super easy and as close to instant gratification as color-work gets.

My excitement grew as the Color-work was finished and I moved up into the main body of the dress. The simple but decorative pattern of knits and purls was quick to knit up and eye catching. It made me happy.

The shoulder seams were a 3 needle bind-off that made a lovely seam. I did miss a stitch that left me with a runner. It had to be fixed as I was picking up stitches to add the cute sleeve edging.

Then there was all the ends to weave in and two buttons to sew on.

So in total, 45 hours 37 minutes later I finished the dress on August 24th. 3 whole days before my deadline!

At this point I needed to jump into Christmas making and the other 2 dresses were put on hold.

Bees Dress #2

I did start the second dress on September 12th, but without any sense of urgency because I will still in the flurry of Christmas creating. Slowly, but surely, I’d only made it to just below the arm pits by February 15th.

I have to say that the color-work was just as fun the second time and worked up just as quickly.

It only took me until March 20th to finish the second dress. This was made in the largest size and took me a total of 53 hours 23 minutes. Although it was made in the largest size, it felt like that it worked up much quicker than the first dress. I attribute that to the lack of having to repeatedly pull out errors in the white work portion.

I mentioned to Alicia that I was nearing completion of this dress and she said it would make a wonderful Easter dress. Now I had a hard deadline. I only gave myself 2 days from the finishing of dress #2 before starting on dress #3.

Bees Dress #3

By April 5th, I’d made considerable progress on the 3rd dress.

The final dress was finished on April 8th. It had taken a total of 32 hours and 30 minutes. I am very happy with how all 3 of these dresses turned out. You know what else? I still have leftovers of all the colors of yarn. ;-D

Note: I finished the last dress on Easter night, not long before midnight. I was a bit bummed out that I had missed Easter, but the dresses were still well received on the following Monday.