Knit a Blanket that Looks Like a Quilt

I’ve been seeing a lot of knitting projects lately — whether they are new or older — that include elements that look like quilt blocks and I am here for it. My aunt is a quilter but I’ve never been much of one, but I love the look of classic quilt blocks incorporated into different media. Whether that’s painted on a barn or worked into a knitting project, it’s a fun way to give a nod to other traditional ares while sticking within your comfort zone.

The Stella Quilt Blanket by Laura Penrose uses a traditional nine-patch star pattern converted into modular knit garter stitch squares in a rainbow of colors. The squares are worked in short rows and are joined as you go so despite all the different colors and pieces used it’s actually worked as one piece. You star from the bottom right corner and then add the next piece to the side of the first.

There’s also an option to work each square separately and sew them together when you’re done knitting. This makes the project more portable, and if you’re using stash it might be easier for you to determine the placement of your squares once they’ve all been knit.

The idea is that you can use DK weight yarn or fingering weight held double, so it’s a great way to use mini skeins or leftovers from other projects. There are also two sizes of motifs you can use depending on the quantity of yarn leftovers or skeins you have on hand.

The project includes general sizing and needed motifs for four sizes of blankets, ranging from a lap blanket that use four motifs to a throw rectangle that is made from three by four rows of motifs. Choosing to use larger or smaller squares also changes the size, and of course you can keep adding to make an even bigger blanket if you want.

This project is suited for intermediate knitters who are comfortable with picking up stitches and working German short rows.

You can find the pattern on Ravelry.

[Photo: Laura Penrose]

When I was looking around for free knitting patterns to share recently, I came across this fun leopard print wrap from Yarnspirations.

This fun bulky wrap gives you tons of practice with instarsia and makes a bold statement while keeping you warm. It’s rated for intermediate knitters and the design is charted but pretty easy to follow. And it’s only 50 rows and worked in bulky yarn, so it wouldn’t even take that long to knit. (You can grab the free pattern from Yarnspirations.)

So what’s the problem? The yarn that the pattern calls for has been discontinued, and it’s not a yarn that a substitute for immediately springs to mind.

The original yarn was Patons Alpaca Blend, a single ply bulky yarn that was a combination of acrylic, superwash wool, nylon and alpaca.

My first thought was Lion Brand Hue + Me, which is an acrylic and wool blend, with two plies instead of a single. It looks like it has the colors you would need to make this fun shawl.

But as I was thinking about it, I thought this would be a good opportunity to introduce you to YarnSub if you don’t already know about it. This website is a giant database of yarn that can consider the qualities of the yarn you want to substitute and offer potential substitutions.

It’s not only thinking about yarn weight, like I was, but also fiber content, number of plies, gauge and even the difference in yardage between one ball and another. It even looks at the price and can be filtered by your price range or preferences about fiber content (if, say, you’re sensitive or allergic to wool, for example, or don’t want to you acrylic).

When I plugged in Alpaca Blend, it gave me a lot of different options, though many of them were self-striping or multicolored, which wouldn’t work for this project, and I don’t see a way to filter for solid colors only.

Still, it’s a good tool to give you some ideas you might not know about or might have forgotten about, and it tells you how the new yarn is similar to the old one and how it differs, allowing you to make smarter choices when substituting yarns.

[Photo: Yarnspirations]

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