Baby Wali was born to parents, who among their journeys, have visited a space shuttle launch in Florida and toured NASA in Houston.
Not surprisingly, when his parents were planning for his arrival, Wali's nursery was planned around a space theme. At first, this decision threw me a little (though clearly from above, it shouldn't have). I had had my eye on another baby blanket pattern for some time, and so had to readjust a bit. I ultimately found a delightful - and adaptable – pattern on Ravelry for an Outer Space Blanket.
The pattern is knit via individual squares that are grafted together. As I was making the squares, I was able to adjust my efforts based on the size and design that I wanted. I ultimately landed on six squares, three with a stars / space background and the other three with different space-themed patterns.
I was really happy with the result, though the number of colors used and the intricate intarsia required a fair amount of effort. In particular, the weaving in of the ends was quite laborious. For my first block, I left the weaving in to the end, which resulted in a mess of tangled strings.
From that square on, I then wove in the ends as I went, using this technique from Eunny Jang. It took some time before I felt like this approach truly hid the ends (especially when sewing in white yarn ends on a black background), but it really worked. I will definitely use this technique moving forward.
However, given the likelihood that some of the ends would unravel a bit with use, I decided to sew on a fabric backing on the back to avoid the baby getting caught with any loose fibers. I went to Metro Textile Corp in NYC, and they were able to direct me to a black, stretchy and soft fabric that worked perfectly. I didn't quite measure it the right way, but all was good with the final result.
Full details and additional pictures are below!
Wali's Out of This World Baby Blanket
Pattern: Modified Outer Space Blanket by ShoeDiva Designs. I knit three stars squares, one UFO square, one red rocket square, and one spaceman three space.
Yarn: Cascade 220 Superwash – 1.5 skeins in 815 black, and smaller bits in 809 really red, 871 white, and 227 bachelor button. I also used some orange / yellow leftovers from another project.
Needles: US 7 circular
Measurements: Pre-blocking measurements of 8 1/2 inches long by 9 inches wide per square. Post-blocking measurements by 9 1/2 inches long by 10 1/5 inches wide per square, and 22 inches long by 20.5 inches wide for the full blanket.
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