***Patterns and Knitting info found at bottom of post***
In a couple months my nephew is turning 2 years old. As with most 2 year olds (I gather), he really loves Sesame Street right now. Currently, his two favourite shirts have Oscar and Elmo on them and my sister tells me they never even make it back into his drawer; every time he sees they’re clean, that is what he picks to wear. As such, when I was trying to decide what to make him for his birthday, my first thought was of Sesame Street.
I found a really great idea in Debbie Stoller’s Stitch ‘N Bitch: Superstar Knitting that I thought would be absolutely perfect. It’s Rain O’Brien’s pattern for “Button It!” (in the patterns section of the book). The idea is you knit several “patches” with button holes in the four corners, then sew four buttons onto a shirt. You are then able to add and remove the patches as you wish. Meaning: depending on how many patches you make, you basically get a new shirt for everyone one. In my case, I’m knitting my nephew 5 Sesame Street patches, meaning five different shirts for him.
O’Brien’s pattern also included a knit sweater, however I am going to skip this and simply buy a plain white/beige/black t-shirt and sew the buttons on to that. This is firstly because I’m lazy and don’t want to knit a whole sweater, secondly because I live far away from my nephew and so can’t measure him easily, and thirdly because I like the wear-ability and wash-ability of cotton t’s. I am thinking I might do up a sweatshirt or long sleeved shirt with buttons, too. His birthday is in May, so it’s an awkward time of year in Canada, weather wise.
To make the patterns for the patches, I put some photos from the internet through GIMP, made the canvas size to be 30 x 34 pixels (the number of stitches I wanted) and then spent a decent amount of time “fixing” the photos. I then created the charts in Word.
I’ve included them here in PDF form as a free download. I wish you all happy knitting, and please feel free to contact me with any questions.
More pictures to come…
PDF Intarsia Chart for Oscar the Grouch
PDF Intarsia Chart for Big Bird
PDF Intarsia Chart for Bert and Ernie
PDF Intarsia Chart for Cookie Monster
Knitting Specs
Yarn: Lana Gatto Super Soft (50g for 125m; 100% extra fine merino wool)
Needles: 4mm; US size 6
Size of Finished Product: 44 stitches by 50 rows = 8 x 7 inches (length x height)
These are really nice…! Thank you for sharing!
I love these patterns but can’t seem to download them. Is there something special I should be doing? The graph appears but with a message over it from “Runtime” that there is a problem with the word.press website?!! Please help me!
Hi Rita,
I’m not really sure what’s happening, but I’m going to download the charts and e-mail them to you!
Look for my e-mail in your account,
Jessica
Thanks so much, Jess!! I want to use them in making some things for my grandson, Sebastian, who will be turning one on Sept. 1st. I truly appreciate your “extra” efforts to help me out. Rita
may u please email me the written pattern please
Hi Brenda – unfortunately I don’t have the written pattern! Maybe another keen knitter would be willing to translate the intarsia patterns into a text pattern! Sorry to disappoint.
These look great! Thank you so much for sharing the patterns! I think I will use the charts and sew them together to make a blanket for my daughter’s Christmas gift this year. She absolutely in love with Sesame Street!
By chance do you have the written patterns for the dishcloth patterns of the Sesame Street characters. I’m terrible at reading knitting charts. Thank you, JOY
Hi Joy,
Unfortunately I don’t have a written pattern. Anyone else out there willing to translate these into a written pattern for Joy??
Jess