As I shared last week in part one of the ‘How to Design a Crochet Blanket’, I will always love crochet blankets. Crochet blankets bring a sense of comfort and home. And when I see a maker using one of my crochet blanket patterns to create a piece of comfort for a loved one, I swell with pride!

I want you to feel that same sense of pride as you design your own crochet blanket pattern! In part one, I walked you through the process of getting started with your crochet blanket design and gave you some homework to bring to this week’s lesson.

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Your homework last week was:

1. To figure out what yarn and hook size you want to use for your crochet blanket design.
2. Finding what stitch or stitch pattern would look best using the yarn and hook you chose.
3. Decide on what crochet blanket size you want to design.
4. Make a gauge swatch so we can work out all the math together.

Have you done your homework? If not, take some time to complete those four tasks before reading on.




As I shared in last week’s article, I wanted to make a blanket for my grandson who lives in Arizona. His blanket needed to be something he could tote around with him without dragging it on the ground. Since he lives in Arizona, I wanted something airy so he could use his blanket year-round. Oh, and it needed to be durable because his momma will have to wash it a lot since he’s only two!

With my daughter on video chat, I walked around Joann feeling every skein on their shelves! I’m all about that texture! I pulled out a few yarn choices of different sizes and colors and let my daughter make the final decision. She chose RED HEART HYGGE (hoo-gah) in Indigo. Once she made her decision, I knew which bird this blanket design would be named after!

Red Heart Hygge yarn is a bulky (size 5) weight yarn, but it is so squishy! The feel of the yarn truly is the definition of hygge (hoo-gah). Because this yarn was thinker than what I expected to use, I need to make sure my stitch pattern isn’t very dense to accommodate for the airy feel I wanted.

I made several swatches with various stitch patterns and decided on a simple filet crochet stitch.




Have you made your swatch yet? If not, here’s how:

1. 1. Figure out your stitch pattern. This could be one single stitch throughout or a combination of several stitches.
   2. Chain a number of stitches that measure about 4 ½ to 5 inches. If your stitch pattern requires a certain number of repeats (called multiples), then make sure the number of chains reflect those multiples. **don’t forget to add your turning chains**
   3. Work your swatch in your stitch pattern. **Designer Tip: If your design is worked with multiple different stitches, you can work up your swatch in the stitch that is used the most. For example, if my design used 3 treble crochet rows followed by two single crochet rows you can work up your swatch using only treble crochets. The SC’s are really just too small to matter when making a gauge swatch. However, if you’re using a particular stitch multiple over a number of rows, work your swatch in the stitch multiples.**
   4. When it comes to working up a gauge swatch, it’s best to work up a 5–6 inch swatch. The edge of your swatch isn’t reliable to reflect your true tension. However, the middle piece of your fabric is. So, creating that 5-6 inch swatch will allow you an accurate gauge.

Now that you have your swatch, it’s time to work some numerical magic!!

To work up the numbers needed to create our crochet blanket pattern, you’ll need the following:

1. Your gauge swatch
2. A measuring tape
3. A kitchen scale
4. A calculator
5. Something to take notes with

Knowing how much yarn we need for our crochet blanket design is super important so we don’t run out of yarn. Let’s do some math and figure out the EXACT amount of yarn we’ll need! Make sure to write down each measurement as we go and label them in alphabetical order. We’ll need these numbers a few times during this practice.

• • (A) Measure the full width of your swatch
  • (B) Measure the full height of your swatch.
  • (C) Weigh your swatch with a kitchen scale. You can use either ounces or grams. I prefer grams because I think it’s a more accurate weight.

I’ll use my swatch as the example to show you in real time how we’re working out all the math.

• (A) The width of my swatch is 6.5 inches
• (B) The height of my swatch is 6.5 inches
• (C) My swatch weights 26 grams

 

Now we want to figure out how many stitches and rows are in one inch of our swatch. Measure in the middle of your swatch because this best reflects your true tension.

Again, I’ll use my swatch as the example.

• (D) I measured 3 stitches per inch
• (E) I measured about 1.5 rows per inch.

If your swatch measurements are not a whole number, don’t freak out! We can work with fractions of an inch!

Here’s a little cheat sheet to convert fractions to decimals:

Now, take a look at the yarn you chose for your design. How much does one skein weight?

• (F) One full skein of Red Heart Hygge yarn is 8 oz. or 227 g. I’ll use 227 g for my calculations since I used grams to weight my swatch.

The last number we need to jot down before working some math magic is the size of blanket we want to design.

Most Common Blanket Sizes

I’m wanting to design a security blanket so my measurements will be:

• (G)14 inches wide
• (H)17 inches long

Now, when working with stitch multiples we may need to adjust the width and length just a little because we’ll have to accommodate for the repeats. But with that in mind, we’ll work out all this math first, then I’ll show how to do the tweaking for the stitch multiples later.

Let’s Do Some Math Magic!

Okay, take the width measurement of your swatch and multiply it by the height measurement of your swatch. The product of multiplying these two numbers will equal the AREA of your swatch. Area is the size of the surface of your swatch.

So, taking my measurements as an example:

(A) 6.5 x (B) 6.5 = 42.25 (I)

The area of my swatch is 42.25. Now that we have the area of our swatch, we’re going to figure out the area of our finished blanket. We’ll do this by multiplying the width and length of the blanket size we want to make. I’m wanting to make a security blanket that is 14 X 17 inches, so my math will look like this:

(G) 14 x (H) 17 = 238 (J)

The area of my entire security blanket is 238. Now, let’s figure out how many swatches it’ll take to fill the size of the security blanket I want to make:

(J) 238 ÷(I) 42.25 = 5.6331360947 I’ll go ahead and round to the nearest tenth = 5.6 (K)

It’ll take 5.6 or almost 6 swatches to cover the entire area of my security blanket. Now, let’s see how much our blanket design will weight once it’s finished. We’ll do this by multiplying the weight of your swatch (C) by the number of swatches it’ll take to cover the area of your finished blanket (K).




Again, I’ll use my measurements as an example:

(C) 26 x (K) 5.6 = 145.6 (L)

The finished weight of my security blanket should weight about 145.6 grams. Now, with these calculations, we’re going to figure out EXACTLY how much yarn we’ll need to complete our design project. You ready?

Take the weight of your finished blanket (L) and divide that number by (F) the weight of one skein of yarn. Here’s my calculations:

(L) 145.6 ÷ (F) 227 = 0.645814978 (M) I’ll round the quotient to the nearest tenth which will be 0.6 or just over half a skein of yarn. It’s a really good idea to add at least half a skein to your calculation to make up for anything that may happen in your designing process.

That was the bulk of our calculations, just a little more math magic and we’ll be well on our way to actually stitching up our blanket design! Now we need to find out what our beginning stitch count needs to be in order to measure the width we want as well as how many rows it’ll take us to complete its length.

If you plan on adding a border to your blanket, don’t add the measurements of your border when working out these calculations. As a matter of fact, let’s say you’re going to add a 2-inch border all the way around your blanket. I would subtract 2 inches from your finished measurements. If you don’t subtract your border from your measurements, you’ll end up with a larger size blanket than intended.

Okay….First, let’s figure out our beginning stitch count. The beginning stitch count will help us work our project to the width we want. Using my calculations for my security blanket design, I’ll take my stitches per inch (D) and multiply it by the width of my finished project (G)

(D) 3 x (G) 14 = 42 (N)

Now, if I was using a stitch pattern where stitch multiples didn’t matter, then I can move forward with these calculations. However, I have a stitch multiple of 12 and these calculations won’t work for my design. 42 can’t be multiplied by 12 evenly. So, I’ll either need to add more stitches or take some stitches away to make my multiples work.




If I add stitches so my stitch count is divisible by 12, then I would add 6 stitches making my starting stitches 48. According to my measurements, 3 stitches = 1 inch, so my finished blanket would end up being 16 inches. That’s bigger than the size I want so I’ll take some stitches away instead.

I’m going to take 6 stitches away and now my starting stitches will be 36 stitches. 3 stitches = 1 inch and 36 ÷ 3 = 12. My finished piece should be 12 inches. This will give me room enough to add a 1-inch border to make the finished width measure 14 inches.

Now, let’s do our last math calculations and figure out how many rows we’ll need to make our blanket design the length we want. We’ll use our rows per inch calculations (E) and multiply that number by our desired length (H).

To figure out how many rows I need I’ll use the following calculations:

(E) 1.5 x (H) 17 = 25.5 (O)

When you have a decimal or a fraction of a number, round to the nearest whole number.

If you are working with row multiples, meaning you have to repeat a certain number of rows to create your design, and the numbers don’t match up you can do the same kind of calculations I did above for the beginning stitch count to make your row multiples work.

For my design, I have a 6 row repeat and 25.5 rows won’t work. Since I’ve decided to add a 1-inch border to my design, I’ll make my row count 24, which is divisible by 6. Now my blanket will measure 16 inches before adding the 1-inch border.

Want All These Formulas in a Free Easy to Follow Guide?

I’d love to see your blanket designs! Tag me on social media using #sweetbirdcrochet