Snow in spring

Outside it's almost spring: snowdrops, crocuses, even daffodils are all over the place. Nature is one month ahead of schedule here in the Netherlands. Despite (or maybe because) of us having the mildest winter ever, I made this snowy sweater for my son. Inspired by an ombre shirt I bought for myself, I looked for ombre fabric to create something similar. I couldn't find any fabric, but then I pinned this picture, and knew what to do with it....

I tweaked the picture a bit in photoshop and then had it printed on a fat quarter of knit fabric by the Dutch company Exprezzit. I only printed such a small amount, since it was the first time I ordered anything there, and I've been disappointed by the quality of other companies before. However, I'm  really pleased with the quality. The fabric is quite thin, but very soft. The colors are vibrant, although they didn't exactly come out as envisioned (there's a bit of a pink haze on the top trees; I blame that on my editing though). The best thing is, when prewashing it, the fabric hardly shrunk and the colors didn't fade at all.  

The tree fabric was used for the front panel of a raglan sweater, using a pattern from Ottobre. 

I color blocked the sleeves to emulate the ombre effect, using some old t shirts and dark blue jersey. 

The same blue jersey was used for  the back panel, bottom band and cuffs.

For the side tag, I used one of the fancy stitches on my machine to create a little snowflake. Ever since I got my machine, I've been looking for reasons to use those stitches, and I've finally found a very good one. I'm definitely going to do this more often. Love the detail...  

 So there you have it, a snowy sweater for spring... Fortunately, it's rather big on him, so with a bit of luck it will still fit next season.