Gingerbread House 1, Front Porch The first thing to add to the house is a front porch. This is constructed around plastic canvas as the house was and then sewn in place on one of the end walls. You will need small pieces of the plastic canvas used for the house and some more of the ginger and cream DK yarn.
First you will need to cut out the plastic canvas shapes. Use ultra stiff plastic canvas with seven holes to the inch. Cut out five shapes, following the diagrams below.
9 bars 5 bars
16 bars 9 bars 13 bars 9 bars
Front Sides Roof
Cut 1 Cut 2 Cut 2
The front of the porch has to be trimmed to a point. Mark the middle on one short side and draw lines from this point to the 13th bar on each side, counting from the other end. Cut along these lines.
Trim the right angled corners of your
plastic pieces to stop them poking through the knitting.
The Knitting
Each plastic canvas piece will be covered with two knitted pieces. Make sure that your tension is right; the knitted pieces should end up the same size or slightly smaller than the plastic they are to cover.
The Sides
These are knitted with ginger DK weight yarn and 3.25 mm /
US size 3 needles. I used Stylecraft Special DK (295m / 100g) in Camel. Use the same yarn you used for the house walls.
Tension: 12 stitches and 25 rows = 5 cm / 2"², working in moss
stitch (US seed stitch).
Using the long tail method, cast on five stitches.
Work 19 rows in moss stitch:
Every row: K1, (P1, K1) twice.
Cast off in moss stitch.
Make four of these shapes and join them together in pairs along three sides. Then insert the plastic sides and close the last seam. The Front
The yarn, needles and tension are the same as for the sides. Using the long tail method cast on nine stitches. Work 19 rows in moss stitch:
Cast off, using the double decrease cast off: sl 1 kwise, K2tog, psso. You will need to knit two of these pieces, cover the plastic front with them as you did the sides.
The Roof
These pieces are covered with stocking stitch pieces, knitted with cream DK weight yarn on 3.25 mm / US size 3 needles. I used Stylecraft Special DK (295m / 100g) in Cream.
Tension: 12 stitches and 17 rows = 5 cm / 2"².
Using the long tail method cast on nine stitches.
Work 11 rows in stocking stitch, beginning with a purl row. Cast off. Make four of these pieces and sew them together round the plastic roof pieces. If you match the cast on edge of one piece to the cast off edge of another, it will help to square up the shape. Now that you have all your pieces you can put them together to make the porch. First oversew the sides to the front and sew the two roof panels together. Then, using the ginger yarn, sew the roof to the porch. It is easiest to do this by turning the porch upside down. Make sure that the sides are level with the ends of the roof.
Before attaching the finished porch to the house, read the notes on assembling the Gingerbread House at the end of the pattern.
Sewing the Porch to the House
Line up the top point of the porch roof with the top point of one of the end walls of the house and pin it in place at the bottom of the wall. Sew the porch to the wall with ginger thread, working all round the outside of the porch. This is awkward to do; most of the rest of the pieces will be much easier than this. You only need to sew through the top layer of the knitted wall and it doesn’t matter if your stitches are a bit rough and ready. When you have finished, take the thread from the top of the porch front, just below the peak of the roof, right through to the inside of the house and back a few times. This will anchor the porch more firmly. Don’t pull too tight or you will squash the front of the porch – just tight enough to hold it securely in place.
My patterns are for personal use only and should not be used to knit items for sale. Please do not use them for teaching purposes without my permission. Assembling the Gingerbread House
Use long pins to attach the pieces to the house before sewing; either T pins or pearl headed pins. These need to be about 4 cm / 1¾" long in order to be able to anchor the three dimensional pieces like the porch and the chimney.
The pieces are sewn on with sewing thread; this gives a tidier finish than wool. Generally speaking, the thread colour should match the background, not the piece being sewn to it, so this will normally be ginger for things sewn to the house and cream for the roof but there are a few exceptions so check the individual instructions. Don’t worry about tidy stitches - the wool will hide a multitude of sins.
Mostly you will be sewing the things on to the top layer of the knitting only but sometimes you will need to work right through the plastic to the inside. Again, untidy stitches don’t matter; they won’t show and the main thing is to secure the decorations.
Pay attention to the measurements given for the placing of the
knitted pieces. It is difficult to give precise measurements but try to keep to them or there won’t be room for all the pieces. You might like to save sewing the things on until you have finished everything for each wall. Then you can arrange them so that they all fit.
Generally speaking, pieces at the bottoms of the walls should be
sewn with just a bit of the wall still showing. This gap will be covered by the snowdrift which is added at the end. There are a few exceptions to this general rule so, again, check the instructions carefully.
