My Grandmother Liked to Knit Free Baby Clothes

Aside from the fact that knitting is such an enjoyable, relaxing hobby, a lot of people like to knit because they can knit free baby clothes. I remember helping my grandmother roll yarn and then watching her knit baby blankets and hats and booties for the ladies in the neighborhood. And she told me about helping her grandmother do the same thing. But it never occurred to me, until I started knitting for my own family, that my grandmother was actually knitting free baby clothes for everybody. Not only was knitting her way of relaxing at the end of the day, but she was being frugal at the same time.

Do you remember helping your grandmother roll yarn? I do. I'd spend what seemed like hours sitting there on the floor in front of her with my hands spread out in front of me, holding the yarn while she wound it into neat little balls. But I had forgotten about the times that I sat in that same position and she was winding the yarn onto my hands to begin with. You see, before my grandmother turned all that yarn into pretty colored balls, it used to be someone's sweater.

In my grandmother's day nothing went to waste. Nothing went into the trash until it had been used and reused and reused again. They were frugal back then. They'd been through the Depression and hard times and they knew the value of a dollar. My grandmother loved to knit and I remember watching her look at all the beautiful yarns at the yarn shop. I could see her dreaming about the baby sweaters and baby blankets she'd make with each soft little ball. But she rarely bought her yarn at the yarn shop. More often than not, my grandmother got her yarn for her creations for free.

These days when people clean out their closets they donate all of that used clothing to the local thrift shop but back in my grandmother's day those clothes were bagged up and passed on to family members. Every family had a bag or a box of used clothing stashed in the back of a closet. Clothing that had been lovingly cared for - patched and mended and washed dozens of times. But if it was still wearable you didn't dream of throwing it away. Someone might need it!

All of those beautiful quilts you see in the antique shops were lovingly made by piecing together bits of fabric from these old clothes. They had finally reached the point where they were no longer wearable and people cut them into tiny squares and made patchwork quilts out of them. And just as denim pants and calico dresses were turned in to free quilts, the yarn from old afghans, sweaters, and yes, even old baby blankets was unraveled, washed and wound into those pretty little balls to be reworked into new free baby clothes.

If you have an heirloom baby blanket in your family that was handed down from your grandmother or her grandmother before her, chances are the yarn in that blanket was reworked from another garment because your great grandmother probably really did enjoy knitting, but what she really enjoyed was knitting free baby clothes.