Recycled child's bog jacket

A year ago, I made a lap blanket. But since then, we were given a number of quilts and other blankets, and it ended up in the closet.

Meanwhile, one of our smaller children began to need another winter sweater. I thought of using the lap blanket to make a little "bog jacket" or "bog coat", which is a simple and ancient jacket pattern that can be made from a single square of fabric, using the entire square. It is best known to weavers, but is called a "bog jacket" because one of those bodies found years ago very well-preserved in a peat bog was wearing one made of leather.

Knitter Elizabeth Zimmermann adapted the design for knitting, and put it in her book Knitting Around. At one point I knitted a baby-sized version, which has worked out well and was not quickly outgrown.  I might as well add here that I accidentally mixed in a little wool yarn with the acrylics in this project; the wool felted and shrank, while the acrylics didn't, but I was able to give the shrunken areas a good pull and restore some of the lost width. The lost length didn't matter, because the design runs long on the baby.

There's an example photo here, without the extra fullness in the lower part that Zimmermann added to make room for a thick diaper.

Anyway, in her design the vertical slit that needs to be made is accomplished by dividing the knitting onto separate needles and balls of yarn at that point, while the horizontal slits are made by knitting in a strand of contrasting yarn, which is removed later, with the loose stitches being grafted elsewhere to make the seams for the sleeves and across the chest.

Since I was working with a finished piece of knitting, and I was in a hurry, I decided not to unravel and graft, but to sew and cut, and then sew again.

Knitters really hate cutting into their knitting, because they have a great fear of unraveling stitches, but if you sew in a line of short stitches along every edge that you want to preserve, before you cut, then it is safe to do.  Some of my washcloths are portions of sweaters that I have sewn and cut in this way. I've had no problems with them unraveling. I've also altered sweaters.

In this case, because I wanted to keep the edges a little stretchy, I chose to use a short zigzag stitch. Be warned that this tends to make a curly "lettuce" edge, especially if you stretch it out while sewing, which is sometimes a desirable effect. After sewing around each cut I was going to make, I carefully did the cutting.

The final sewing was a little tricky, in making the right parts go to the right places, but it also went quickly.

To finish it, I found two old coat buttons, and crocheted yarn chains long enough to loop around them. I sewed on the buttons and loops, and it was finished--except for picking off a number of little bits of yarn, the loops that were severed when I did the cutting.

It came out a nice size for the child, with lots of room to grow.