Two years ago, Holly and I
made a baby blanket for Lora's baby Liv. You can only hope that when you put so much love into one project that it will be loved and adored. As luck has it, this blanket that we made so long ago, has a name, and it is Mimi. Mimi rarely leaves Liv's side. Mimi is Liv's soothing pacifier. Mimi cannot be put into the washing machine because the distance between Liv and Mimi would be too great.
It is with great love, that I have embarked on another baby blanket. This one for the most beautiful little boy of my
Beffy Joy. (I think Beffy is the new BFF.) And in case you were interested, I wanted to show how you too can make a blanket such as this. Warning: This is NOT your grandmother's baby blanket. So you can take the polyester yarn that you've been saving for years and go make a pot holder.
It starts with this book,
100 Afghan Squares to Knit which has some great patterns and gorgeous afghans. However, the blankets are all "big people" sizes. So I picked my favorite squares, Sailboats, Stripes, and Speckle and created a rough layout in excel making the blanket 7 x 5 squares. Then I figured how much yarn I would need. Now yarn for a baby blanket is very important. It needs to be extra soft and washable. No one wants to go dry clean a wool cashmere blanket. Especially one that will constantly be covered in spit up, pee, poop, or blueberry jam. My favorite yarn is the
Shine Sport from Knit Picks. It is 60% Pima Cotton and 40% Modal which gives it this luxurious silky soft feel. And it is 100% washable. This blanket used about 5 skeins of Green Apple, 5 skeins of Sky, 3 skeins of Yellow and 3 skeins of Cream. You will also need 1 pair of US 5 needles, 2 circular US 3 needles 29" in length, and a tapestry needle.
During it's conception, I knew that I would need some help to finish this. So I called my mom and did some over the phone eyelash batting to convince her to help me by knitting half of the squares. She came on board like a hurricane and whipped up her squares faster than you can say knit one purl one. Even Holly got in on the action when I lured her pregnant self over for dinner a few times to help me knock out a few extra squares. I love a community blanket. Unfortunately, knitting the squares is the easy part. It's the finishing that takes the longest time.
After all of the squares are finished, you need to flatten or block them. I am lazy and do not care to block to the same size, so I spray them with some water, cover them with a damp cotton rag and iron them until they are flat.
Then I layed them all out of the floor and rearranged them ten times, until I got the pattern I wanted.
Now here is tedious part. You need to handsew the squares together using the
mattress stitch. The mattress stitch consists of sewing each stitch together, which in this case is 50 stitches vertically and 39 stitches horizontally. You begin with the vertical rows. After the rows are done, you piece each of them together. If I did the math right, this works out to about 3,075 hand stitches.
When you have finished stitching the entire blanket together, you need to add a pretty border. You do this by using two size 3 29" long circular needles to pick up stitches. Do one side at a time, using a simple knit, purl. I did 3 rows of Green Apple and 3 rows of Sky, but if you want a bigger border you can add more. On the top and bottom, you can pick up all the stitches, on the side you have to do a 1:4 ratio. Seen here is a detail of the edge.
When all is said and done, the final step is to sew in all the loose ends (at least 2 per square or 70 total) and work the corners together.
And finally, here is the finished project. Just in time to keep the baby warm through the chilly fall nights.
Labels: baby, baby blanket, Joy, knitting
