Someone gave me a bunch of different colors of a shimmery pastel acrylic yarn, that just said to me 'turn me into a baby blanket'. How fortunate my sister is having a baby!
Now there were several colors but not enough of any one of them that I could use a real pattern so I decided to make one up. I knew I wanted the blanket to be about 24"x36" and figured I had enough yarn to get there (I think I had a total of 3 balls) but I didn't know how to make it all work together.
Here's the finished product and then I will explain the details of how I made it.
I had a LOT of white yarn, but not a lot of any of the other colors, so it made sense to do a striped blanket where white was the main color. I had a lot of blue as well, but only a little bit of pink, purple, and multicolor. I decided to put blue on both ends, and then pink, purple and multicolor in the middle. I also thought it would look good to have an equal amount of white to color as I striped, and the stripe size would be determined by how much of whichever color I had. For example, if I had 2 1/2" of pink then I would make a 2 1/2" white strip, then if I had 3" of purple I would make a 3" white stripe.
The reason I am explaining all this is I know whoever may read this will have different amounts of scrap yarns than what I had, but this pattern should work for anyone if you just keep with the logic of it.
I wanted to use Size 10 needles, and the yarn was worsted weight but I didn't know what the gauge was because I didn't have the label.
So to determine the gauge I did a swatch of 20 stitches in garter stitch for 5 rows. This measured just under 5" for me. I knew I wanted my blanket to be 24" wide so 24/5 = about 5 so I cast on 100 stitches onto my #10 needles. It's reversed from the way the way the yarn labels usually explain gauge but it works just as well.
This blanket is done entirely in garter stitch (knit every row) so it is super easy.
Here are the instructions:
1. Cast on 100 stitches of your main color. (or as many as your gauge determined for the blanket to measure 24" wide)
2. Knit every row until piece measures 2".
3. Switch to a 2nd color, whichever you have the least of, leaving approximately 6" tails of both the old and new color when you switch for weaving in later.
4. Knit until this color runs out (making sure you don't run out in the middle of a row!)
5. Switch back to your main color, and measure how long your 2nd color was, and match that same number of rows.
6. Switch to a 3rd color whichever you have the next least of, and knit until this runs out
7. Switch back to your main color and knit the same number of rows as your 3rd color.
8. Repeat until your piece measures about 34" or when you've run out of colors.
9. Switching back to main color and finish up the last 2" in the main color.
10. Bind off.
11. Weave in all your ends.
And that's it! you will have a striped baby blanket!
Happy knitting!!
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