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King Cole Pulls Patterns for Hooded Baby Sleep Bags

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Recent guidance from the UK Government Product Safety board called our various sleep bags, swaddles and hooded sleep sacks for being hazardous to babies. The report says “The sleep bag presents a serious risk of suffocation, overheating and death as it has a head covering.”

It notes that babies can overheat in the sleep bags, which is associated with SIDS, and the hood can cover their face and lead to suffocation. Products have been removed from Amazon listings in the UK as being in violation of the 2005 General Product Safety Regulations, and they have advised parents who own these types of products to stop using them. (They are still for sale in the United States and I assume elsewhere.)

Yarn company King Cole has responded to this report by announcing it is removing its knitting and crochet patterns for similar style bags from circulation and calling on yarn stores that might have printed patterns to destroy them.

King Cole said on Instagram that the patterns being recalled include 5766, 2766, 2823, 5000, 4534, 5945, 5603, 5972, and Aran Book 2. Some older patterns (such as 4672) may also be in circulation and should not be used. (One of the patterns is shown above; there are pictures of all of them in the Instagram post linked above.)

The company advises knitters and crocheters who have these patterns not to use them. If patterns were purchased, they can be returned to a King Cole stockist for a replacement pattern.

If you knit or crochet for babies (in the UK or anywhere else) it’s helpful to be aware of this guidance and consider it when making projects for little ones. If you want to knit a swaddle for a baby, make a sleep sack that slides over the body but doesn’t cover the head for safety. Likewise, if you have a little one in your household you might want to consider discontinuing use of these sorts of products to ensure your little one doesn’t get too hot at night.

[Photo: King Cole via Instagram]

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Comments

  1. If the sleep bags are used when you take baby out in the cold! Then I don’t see the problem as you would put a hat on!
    I would not use this type of sleep bag in the house it’s more for out door use.
    Most countries I know would use this for out door use. It all comes down to common sense and warning labels.

Have you read?

Knit a Linen Stitch Hot Pad

Linen stitch is one of my favorite knitting stitch patterns that, every time I use it in a project, I think about how I don’t use it often enough. 

It’s an easy stitch to make, with slip stitches done with the yarn held to the front of the work on the right/front side and to the back on the wrong/back side, which makes the strand of yarn a visible part of the pattern. 

It also makes a fabric that is thick and looks kind of like a woven fabric.

I recently used linen stitch to make a double-thick pot holder, which I worked in a kind of interesting way. I didn’t want to have to do any sewing on the project, so I started it from a crochet cast on and picked up stitches from the side of the cast on to make the hot pad all in one piece in the round with the edge sealed. 

This requires working on two circular needles, which is another technique I don’t use that often and am always reminded how much I like it when I do. 

The combination of double thickness and the stitch pattern makes for a hot pad that’s already pretty thick, but I also added a bit of old towel to the inside before I closed up the end to make it super thick and extra protective for your surfaces. 

I found the engineering challenge of this construction method to be a lot of fun, but you could also just knit it as a tube (casting on twice as many stitches as I did) and sew up the ends by hand when the knitting is done. Either way you’ve got a useful and pretty addition to your kitchen, whether you work it in a solid color, stripes or as a stash busting project will all your cotton odd balls. 

You can grab the pattern over at Our Daily Craft, or check it out on Ravelry. 

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