weaving a larger version of my son's star blanket?

[Colin Rowat]

Hi all,

My four year old son has mentioned that his star blanket is now too small.  (It's roughly similar to that at http://www.johnlewis.com/231684439/Product.aspx)

I'm therefore trying to find someone who could weave a larger version of it in time for Christmas.  I could smuggle the existing blanket out of the house to show you.

Thank you in advance,

Colin Rowat (espero @ London Hackspace)

[Wren Montgomery]

Colin:

Going by the (admittedly vague) description, the blanket is not woven but knit.  My guess (without seeing the back side) is that it's double knitted (two layers of knitting so that there is no "wrong" side.)  Either that or there's a fabric backing of some kind to hide some untidy ends.

If you want a reasonable (but larger) duplicate, more information is needed: dimensions of the finished project, the stitches per inch of the original, what materials you want to have it made of, how important color matching is. 

Most handknitters charge per yard of yarn used.  When I was knitting for pay regularly, it was ~5p/yard(or m) As an adult sized afghan in meduim weight yarn is about 1000-1200 yds of yarn, you're going to be paying a lot more than 16 quid!  Fairly priced handknit sweaters, which take substantially less yarn than afghans, usually go for 70 quid at the low end.  A month is also pretty short notice for this scale of project! 

In the spirit of the LHS, however: if it is double knit, or if you're OK with a duplicated front and a fabric backing to hide untidy ends, this might be a good project for the LHS knitting machine.  I'm afraid I can't offer more help than that observation as all my expertise is in hand knitting.  I'm happy to take a look at the item, either in person or through photos and make more detailed observations about construction and duplication, and sources of yarn.

Good luck!
Wren

[Catherine Flick]

I'd have to agree with Wren here. Looks like it *is* double knit, which means twice as much yarn for the size then if it were single-knit. It's definitely knit, not woven. Even weaving a large blanket would take a long time - I weave on my Rigid Heddle Loom and just warping it for a metre-wide piece of fabric took me 8 hours by itself, let alone doing the weaving. Knitting that amount would take much longer, too, so a month time limit would be pretty unreasonable unless this was the only thing the knitter was doing. 

You're definitely going to be paying way more than £30 for such a blanket, perhaps you might consider buying a couple of the ones from John Lewis and sewing them together? 

Cheers,

Catherine

[Wren Montgomery]

I didn't realize rigid heddles came with 1m (+?) weaving widths.  What do you have?

Wren

[Catherine Flick]

Oh sorry, I didn't quite explain properly, it's 2x 50cm pieces on an Ashford RHL which I've sewed together into a 1m piece. 

C. 

[Adrian Godwin]

I have a moderately sized 8 shaft loom (it's documented on the wiki somewhere) but still precious little idea of how to use it. So I'd be aiming at Christmas 2014 to do something like this, I suspect. It's installed in my attic at the moment but I could, with some effort, make it available for someone to use.

-adrian

[espero]

Dear wren, Catie and adrian,

Thank you for your detailed replies to my vague query.  

Having stolen the blanket from my sleeping son (and quickly replaced it!), I can show you some more detailed images:

* http://www.wrongdoing.org/star-blanket/side-1.jpg

* http://www.wrongdoing.org/star-blanket/side-2.jpg

* http://www.wrongdoing.org/star-blanket/edge.jpg

* http://www.wrongdoing.org/star-blanket/overall.jpg (n.b. the tag has faded to illegibility)

Thus, I think that you're right, wren: it seems to be double knitted - white stars on blue on one side, and blue stars on white on the other.

On desiderata for a duplicate: 

* we have some large bath towels (165 x 95cm) which seem quite large enough;

* the pattern seems to be two rows 'up' then a space of one row 'down', repeating itself, for a total of about 14 rows per inch;

* I can't tell what the material is, other than to note that it resembles terrycloth;

* on colour matching, closer would be better, but I think that any powder blue and white will do.

On costs, I understand that an enlarged duplicate will be more expensive than sewing a couple of shop-purchased blankets together.  This, though, will be much more special.

wren & Catie: does this sound like too ambitious a job for the LHS knitting machine?  If not, do you know anyone to whom I should speak about that?

Again, thank you,

Colin

p.s. Adrian - perhaps by 2014, my son will need an even larger star blanket...

[Akki]

Not sure why you're talking about bath towels... That's very fine chenille yarn used in that blanket from what I can tell from the pictures. Chenille yarn tends to be quite expensive from my limited experience of it many years ago.

I'm also not sure if the knitting machine would be larger than the original blanket but I've never used the knitting machine.

Maybe you could make an alternative, using fleece? Cut out lots of stars and applique stitch them onto a light blue background. That'd be much warmer than the current material, though.

~Akki

[espero]

Thank you Akki: I have no experience with yarns, so didn't recognise the chenille.

Since last posting, I've continued to ask around, looking for a knitter.  I've just written to Loop and Nest.

Best, and thanks again,

Colin