Knitting

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Enter for a Chance to Win a Royal Baby Kit from Toft Alpaca

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royal baby collection toft alpacaBritish knitwear and fiber company Toft Alpaca has an adorable new line of knitting patterns celebrating the upcoming royal baby. The line includes knit and crocheted crowns and a jump suit, jumper and tank all featuring crowns on the front. They’re the perfect thing for any baby you’d like to treat like royalty.

Toft is celebrating the royal baby with us by giving away two of the jumper kits to Craft Gossip readers who subscribe to their newsletter.

You must click on that link and go subscribe to the newsletter to be entered, but I’d love it if you also commented here to let us know that you entered. Maybe you could share your favorite baby name that you never got to use on a person (mine’s Owen, but that doesn’t sound very royal, does it?). Edited to add: This is for UK residents only; sorry for any confusion!

The contest runs through the end of the month, and winners will be chosen July 1. Good luck!

[Photo via Toft Alpaca.]

Specific to knitters, you can join our Knitting Patterns Only group to get, well, knitting patterns, ask questions and gain inspiration for what to knit next.

Looking for more Baby Knitting patterns? Check these out on Etsy.

Comments

  1. I subscribed. My favorite has always been William with Liam as a nickname but BOTH have been in the top 10 boy names the last couple years. These days I’ve been leaning towards Arthur or Geoffrey.

  2. Hello,

    What lovely knitted baby items. I have subscribed to the newsletter. The name we never got to use was Andrew.

    Happy days.
    Bev.

  4. These are sooooo cute! I signed up for their newsletter. I wanted to name my son Ian, but it wasn’t my DH’s favorite name. We compromised on another name, Jesse, perhaps my second favorite. He did let me use Ian as his middle name, happily. Alas, my son doesn’t like his name. Sigh.

  7. Subscribed-I absolutely love what Toft do. As an alpaca lover, I hope to do what they do one day! Love the names Maisie (my daughter’s name), Penny and Toby

  8. Love all your patterns and wool. Have subscribed. My favourite name is William, maybe I’ll get to use it one day.

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Patchwork Blanket Knitting Patterns

Any time of year is a good time for stash busting, but if you can combine it with knitting a blanket that will keep you warm when it (finally!) gets cooler that’s even better. Let’s take a look at some fun patchwork blanket knitting patterns. 

If you want to keep it super simple, you can just make blocks of garter stitch and sew them together, like the beginner’s patchwork baby blanket from Mini Baa Baa or the color block blanket from Make and Do Crew. Both projects are worked in strips and sew together, with the baby version calling for two strands of DK or light worsted weight yarn held together and the larger one using bulky yarn. 

Add a little more texture with the mixed blocks of the cottage quilt throw from Mama in a Stitch. This one combines garter stitch and seed stitch and uses worsted weight yarn. She used a crochet join to make the chains on top of the blocks, but you can join them however you like. It calls for eight colors but you can use what you have, and there are three size options. 

Get a real sampler style patchwork blanket with this design from Knit Sew Make. It calls for worsted weight yarn and has four size options. All of the patterns just use knit and purl stitches so this one is still pretty easy for beginners. 

If you want a more complex colorwork project that will keep you entertained all season, try the Peace by Piece blanket pattern from Needle and Feather. This one is made up of two color colorwork blocks and calls for worsted weight yarn. You can choose to use just a few of the blocks and repeat them more often, or make multiples of the whole set. 

The knitted patchwork recipe from Martine Ellis (free on Ravelry) uses mitered squares in fingering weight yarn, so it’s perfect for using up all your leftover sock yarn and mini skeins. This one is a tutorial more than a pattern so you can make your blanket as big as you like or keep going until you run out of yarn. 

Susan B. Anderson’s 100 Squares blanket (find it on Ravelry) has a lot of mitered squares, too, but they’re arranged in fun ways and includes some quilt inspired designs as well. This one also is a bit of method more than pattern but it sure looks like a lot of fun for using all the leftovers. 

Of course you can totally improvise a patchwork blanket using the yarn and stitches you like, but I hope these patterns inspire you to look at your leftover yarn in a new way.