Hey everyone, today I thought I’d write a how to on knitting blankets. Knitting your first blanket can be hugely satisfying and can really boost your confidence with your other knits too. Knitting is fun and challenging, relieves stress and can let you create all sorts of awesome things, but first off we’ll start with a blanket.
To start, you’ll need a pair of needles (if you don’t know much about needles, check my how to start knitting article), wool or yarn (wool is better for beginners due to the stretchiness) and to choose your stitch pattern. Before you begin knitting, there’s a little knitting terminology that you may understand already or may not, I have a couple of articles about knitting as a beginner that you should definitely check out first, they’ll only take a couple of minutes to read but the information is invaluable.
Method
- Cast your yarn, find the end of your yarn and make a slipknot.
- Cast 14 stitches and begin knitting your row.
- Continue knitting until you have a 20cm long square
- Cast off your square (to do this, you need to keep 2 stitches in your right needle, then slip the first stitch over the 2nd binding it).
- Knit one more stitch and cast off one more stitch.
- Continue until the end of the row until you only have one stitch left on your right hand needle.
- Cut your yarn and leave a tail, around 1.5ft long.
- Pull through the last stitch so you have then created your first square.
- Repeat the process and create around 35 squares (I know it seems long, but it’s worth it!).
- Once all squares are finished, sew them together with the large needle.
- Place one of the squares with horizontal stitches and the other square with the stitches vertically.
- Insert the needle under the horizontal stitch and pull through so the 2 pieces conjoin. Weave the remaining stitch. Repeat this process throughout 1 by 1.
- Tie a knot and cut it off.
Now you should have your first blanket knitted. It may look terrible, it may look amazing, if it doesn’t look how you expected don’t worry, every mistake is a lesson learned for next time. Either way, you will have knitted your first blanket, and you’ll have learned how to get those knits together too, which is a skill shared across knitting lots of different things!
Conclusion
To conclude, you should have knitted your first amazing (or not so amazing yet) blanket, on your next knit, experiment with the colors, add some cross stitching patterns in over the top and stitch your children’s names across the bottom. This is hands down the most amazing gift at Christmas if you can knit personal bed covers, for friends, family and your own kids. It is well worth the time, effort and love that you put into every stitch.
