Levi’s Baby Blanket

Levi’s Baby Blanket

About the pattern:

Levi’s Baby Blanket is based around the theme of three, which is personal to Levi’s family and also represents Father, Mother and new baby.

I chose three cable patterns for the blanket: a central heart motif repeated three times, a cable that suggested to me a baby cradled between parents, and a simple three-strand braid.  Each cable motif is set off by a “gutter” of three stitches worked in reverse stockinette.

To stabilize and set off the cables, I chose seed stitch: a border of six stitches on each side of the cables and 10 rows on the top and bottom border.

You can read my notes and roundup, including more photos, here.

Materials:

Yarn: Superwash DK weight wool, about 800 yards.

I worked my blanket in Knit Picks Swish Superwash Bare (undyed) Worsted Weight and used about 3.5 of the 220 yard/100 gram hanks.

Needles: Size 5 circular needles (or whatever size you want to get gauge).

I used US size 5 KnitPicks Options needles.  I wanted an extra-dense fabric so I worked on slightly smaller needles than I normally would have.

Gauge:

Rather than doing a big cable swatch, I suggest swatching up a square of seed aka moss stitch.  I worked my blanket with 6 stitch side borders and 10 row top and bottom borders, because for me the width of 6 stitches was roughly equivalent to the height of 10 rows.  Figuring this out ahead of time is helpful!  Decide how much border you want (I suggest about an inch) and then swatch to determine how many rows and stitches you need.  In my case, I got about 6 stitches and 10 rows to 1 inch.

My finished blanket was about 44×32, though your mileage may vary, depending on yarn and blocking.

Blanket pattern:

1. Cast on 160 stitches.

(If you want to alter the border, cast on for the width of your borders plus the 148 stitch width of the cable chart.  In my case I worked borders six stitches wide, so I would add 12 (6 for each border, two borders total) to 148, the width of the cable chart, to get 160 stitches total.)

2. Work 10 rows in seed stitch for the bottom border. Seed stitch is made as follows: Row 1: K1,  P1 (repeat), Row 2:  P1, K1 (repeat)]

(I worked 10 rows, you should do whatever you’ve decided based on your swatch.)

3. Begin working chart 1 but keep your borders in seed stitch.

I suggest placing stitch markers at the beginning and end of the seed stitch border as well as in between each cable section and the three-stitch-wide reverse stockinette “gutter” between cables (marked in light blue) to help you remember where you are.

4. Work the cable chart, rows 1-80 three times.

5. On the fourth repeat, knit ONLY rows 1-56.

6. Work 10 rows in seed stitch for the top border.

(If you altered the bottom border work the same number of rows you knit on the bottom border.

7. Bind off.  Be sure to block, as the cables will bloom dramatically with blocking!

A note about the cable chart:

I created this chart for myself and worked with it on an 11×17 sheet of paper.  I think I would have gone crazy working from a smaller chart, but because I know 11×17 paper is not necessarily on everyone’s shelves, I’ve created an 8.5×11 size PDF as well.

levi-baby-blanket-11×17-cable-chart (This will open an 11×17 PDF Document)

levi-baby-blanket-8×11-cable-chart (This will open an 8.5×11 PDF Document)

Happy Knitting!