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Dallas Hospital Wants Blankets for Every Baby

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parkland hospital warm up americaParkland Hospital in Dallas is the public hospital for Dallas County, which means they deliver a lot of babies in a lot of different circumstances.

They’re teaming up with Warm Up, America to try to fulfill a great — and big — goal: to have every baby born at the hospital leave in a hand-knit or -crocheted baby blanket.

To that end, Warm Up, America is requesting baby blankets instead of the regular blanket sections. Ideally they say they would like blankets to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 inches square, but if you work in the usual WUA square template you’d end up with a 35 by 40 inch blanket, which would also work. (They don’t mention it, but smaller blankets are great for preemies, too.)

All blankets need to be made out of machine washable and dryable materials for use in the hospital environment.

Check the page linked above for more details on where to send the blankets. And check out my baby blanket patterns if you need inspiration!

[Photo via Warm Up, America.] Looking for more Baby Knitting patterns? Check these out on Etsy.

Comments

  1. I would like to have the address of where to send the blankets. Please send it to my email address above. Thank you.

  4. This post is from 2014 so I don’t think that particular campaign is still going on. But lots of hospitals accept blankets, so you could start locally and see if anyone is looking for donations.

  5. This project is old, but Parkland can always use blankets of any kind. It is in Dallas you can Google for the address.

Have you read?

Learn a Flower Bobble Technique to Knit a Fun Shawl

Generally I like knitting patterns where I feel like you can use whatever yarn you have (because my stash is big enough and I want to use it, thanks) and make a successful project. This is one of those times when a special yarn makes the process that much easier. 

The Floral Bouquet Shawl from Xandy Peters uses a specific extended color pooling yarn from Feisty Fibers, which allows you to place the bobble flowers with increasing frequency as you knit the project. 

It starts with a solid color yarn, then the two color yarn is added in, and you make a bobble whenever you encounter the color pops. This would be hard to replicate with other yarn that doesn’t have the extended color pooling built in.

The background of the shawl is ribbed, making the project reversible. 

The shawl uses fingering/sock yarn and comes out to be an asymmetrical triangle that’s 54 inches/137 cm long and 36 inches/ 90 cm deep and 60 inches/150 cm across the top edge. 

Xandy says the pattern is for intermediate to advanced knitters. Knowing how to work traditional bobbles would probably help, but there’s a great video tutorial for how to work the floral bobbles so you can practice on other yarn or even incorporate the bobbles into other projects. 

The bobbles are five-petaled flowers but they also kind of look like starfish to me, which could be fun on a child’s cardigan or other pattern. They’d also be fun on the leg of a sock or around the brim of a hat for extra whimsy. 

The pattern includes photo and video tutorials, and written and charted instructions. It also includes tips on what to look for if you choose to use different yarn for the project, and instructions on how to dye your own yarn to use in the project. 

If you want to give it a try, you can find the pattern on Ravelry. 

[Photo: Xandy Peters]