If you are a serious knitter you will probably know immediately what I am talking about and for the non-knitters I am not talking about an unexpected pregnancy!
Elizabeth Zimmermann is the guru of knitting. The first article I knitted using her instructions was a Baby Surprise Jacket. If you link to this Pinterest page you will see various versions of this jacket which is knitted in one piece and joined with a woven seam across the shoulders. The next image is from Pinterest.
I have used Zimmerman’s book The Knitting Workshop 
which I bought when I knitted a baby surprise jacket for our grandson. I also have a copy of Knitting Without Tears.
The Adult Baby Surprise Jacket I have just completed was knitted as a request from my elder daughter. She knew I had loads of scrap wool in my stash and she selected a few colours she wanted to include in her jacket and I set about my next project. I bought the pattern from Schoolhouse press.
The two markers show where the decreases have taken place up to the point of the underarms then the increases happen. Unfortunately I didn’t start the increases correctly and ended up with a bit of a hole.
I decided I really should unravel what I had done and so I undid the couple of hundred stitches and started the increases again, this time correctly.
This is at the point where the front flap stitches are put on holders and then you knit backwards and forwards on the bottom stitches.
Once the bottom section is knitted then a border is knitted around the edge before the single piece is assembled into a jacket.
At this stage the sleeves have not been joined and the collar hasn’t been added.
To join the sleeves I used two stitch bind off for the first sleeve but was not happy with the result as the colours showed through in the middle so I tried three stitch bind off for the second sleeve and it was much better. You can see the difference in the next picture.
The front sleeve is the two stitch bind off. I undid that sleeve join and redid it with three stitch bind off.
The dummy is bigger than my daughter but it gives you some idea of how it will look.
Working on the collar.
This was an absolute joy to work as I was getting rid of some of my stash and it was all garter stitch, the easiest of all. I sewed in the many ends and searched for some suitable buttons. No luck with the buttons so I have sent it off to my daughter so she can choose buttons to finish it off.
A thoroughly enjoyable project.
I have since found the post of the original jacket I made.
Gippsland Granny 