Back in July 2020, I released my Summersweet Blanket pattern, a design that I had created for a special friend’s baby girl. Then in July 2021, I created the Randolph Blanket for another special friend’s new baby boy. The trend continues this Summer with a new design for a third special baby, also a beautiful little girl. This is the Quietude Blanket.
Cables flow in and out of ribbed columns in an architectural manner, creating chevrons that flow across the surface of the fabric. In keeping with my many other designs for kids, I think this blanket works equally well for boys and girls.
The chevron cables are offset by a background of smaller eyelet cables that lend a more delicate feeling to the finished fabric. A few garter stitches on each side ensures that the blanket edges lie flat.
Because this particular pattern creates a ribbing-like fabric, I omitted a border for the bottom and top edges and just allowed the pattern to flow from end to end in the blanket, giving Quietude a more modern feeling.
The blanket is shown in the carriage blanket size, but the pattern also includes two larger sizes for a lap throw and a full afghan. If you’re in the mood to make a custom-sized blanket (especially if you have a specific yardage of yarn), you can easily customize your own blanket size by adding or removing pattern repeats as described in the pattern. The cable panel pattern is also fully written out AND charted to suit everyone’s knitting style!
The blanket is worked flat in one piece in an aran-weight (or heavy worsted) yarn. A solid or mostly-solid colored yarn works best here to allow the various textures in the pattern to shine through.
The yarn featured here is new to me, although not new to the fiber market in general, and it’s EXCELLENT for baby knits. I used Simpliworsted by HiKoo for Skacel in the Bubblegum color (#021). This superwash merino/acrylic/nylon blend yarn feels as soft and smooth as merino wool when you knit with it, but it washes up as nicely as any 100% synthetic baby yarn. And because there’s such a high proportion of wool in the blend (55%), the fabric is warm and it does not pill when you use it or wash it like other acrylic yarns! That’s a win-win for me as a designer and as a gift-giver. If a lilac-toned pink shade is not your speed, then Simpliworsted comes in dozens of other lovely colors.
Writing this blog post today has given me a chance to walk back down memory lane and look at all of the baby blankets I’ve knit for my own children or for other special kiddos. As I look at those pictures, I’m reminded of the love and hope that I knit into each of those blankets. My wish is that, if you choose to knit this design, you can knit your own happy wishes into it. Because, let’s be honest: we can all use as much goodwill these days as we can muster.
You can find the pattern here on Ravelry and here at DCD. And, happily, it’s 20% off through midnight EDT on September 5th, no code needed!
Happy knitting and happy back to school time!
xoxo Danielle
PS: This is the first design I’ve photographed in my “new” back yard since we moved last year. I enjoyed playing around with the background blur feature on my camera, and I love that you can still see the reddish hint of my flowering plum tree against all the green of Summer!
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