Design and Knit a Baby Blanket- Free Tutorial.

A few weeks ago I was asked if I could design and knit two baby blankets for twin boys. The only directions I had were, could each blanket have the baby's name. Luckily for me both names are short :) Dean and Adam. As these blankets contain many different knitting techniques I thought it would be a great idea to share with you - as a sort of  free tutorial. Therefore every tuesday will be a knitting class, and if you subscribe (free) to this blog at the end of the course you will recieve a free knitting pattern for the completed blanket.
Lesson 1, the process of chosing the design.
First of all I had to decide if I wanted to knit the blanket in squares, in strips or as a whole. As the weather is hot here I decided to knit as a whole would be too much (too hot and heavy) and although I like the design of knitting in squares I really didn't want all that sewing up. So I chose the best of both worlds using a design of squares but knitting in strips.


Now that was decided the next thing is what size?
The yarn I'd chosen to use is a double knit type yarn that knits up with a tension of 20 sts and 26 rows = 4 ins [10 cm] in stocking st on size 4.5mm (U.S.7) needles. The averavage baby blanket is Approx 36 ins [91.5 cm] wide x 42½ ins [108 cm] long.
As I've chosen a design using squares  I worked on the basis that each square will be 8ins (20cm) and 40sts. There will be four squares across the width and five squares along the length, giving me a blanket 32ins (81.5cm) wide X 40ins (101.5 cm) long then ı'll add a border of approx 2ins (5cm) which will give me an average sized blanket. If you wanted a bigger blanket add more squares.


Next how to arrange the design.
As the name required on the blanket has four letters I'll need 1 square across for each letter, for the other squares I've chosen a stripe, a boat, a bus, balls and a cable design to give a bit of texture. The easiest way to arrange the design is to make a chart as below.

Balls	Cable	Stripe	Boat
Stripe	Boat	Bus	Cable
A	D	A	M
Cable	Bus	Boat	Stripe
Boat	Stripe	Cable	Balls

Now you could knit each square indivdually then sew them all together, but I've decided to knit in strips so that will be 4 strips lengthways starting with the boat. As you can see in the photo I've also knit the border on the fist strip but we'll talk about that later.


Next tuesday I will show you how to make a knitting motif chart for the boat etc.

I hope I've managed to keep this simple but please if you have any questions just drop me a line in the comments section.




Don't forget your free subcription (in the box provided) to this blog  and you'll recieve the complete knitting pattern for this baby blanket at the end of the tutorial.