mummy knit knit

Questions about Willums Blanket Phase 1

I frequently get asked questions about my blanket for Willum. I’ve never featured it on this blog really, perhaps I should. Anywho, I’ve decided that I ought to post some of the questions and the answers I have provided for others reference:

What method did you use to sew squares together?

I knit the blanket into 7 strips. So each strip I knit continously just switching color etc.  Then when the 7 strips were complete I basically whip stitched them willy nilly together.  I found anchoring the top and bottom of each square to the one I was wishing to align to greatly helped keep things in place while I whipped them together.

How did you figure out how to get all the squares the same size?

I am a beginner also and am having trouble to work out how many to cast on, as some patterns say to cast on 40, others in multiples of 9, others in multiples of 12+1, other 38. Help!

I attempted to keep each square roughly 30-40 stitches. I didnt really know to do that the first 2 strips tho. 
If I did a heavily ribbed square, I’d use more stitches but didn’t worry about it too much 
Each strip was knit continously I just switched pattern and color appropriately.

I also didn’t like the look of some of the dishcloth blocks with the border so I simply ommitted them and adjusted my cast on count accordingly.

When my strip weren’t sewn together, some were about 1 foot bigger then the others etc etc. 
When I whipstitched the strips together, I’d anchor the top of a block and the bottom of a block together (the ones I wnat to line up) I’;d then whip them together and voila they lined up perfectly.

Did you put a border on all of them (that needed it in order to not curl)

I didn’t worry about curling from having a stockinette type border etc, sewing them together magically made everything come together PERFECT!

Did you put any kind of a backing on the blanket?

No backing, doesn’t need it really. Its very sturdy, and reversible

Tell me, you say you used 3.75mm needles although the yarn calls for 5mm is that because you have a looser tension on bigger needles?

As far as the 3.75mm needles. I realllly don’t like the look of Misti knit with the 4.5-5mm’s. It looks sloppy [to me]. The pima/silk sheds considerably and I find that it almost looks dirty when looser. I like the strcture that the firmer knit provided, for alot of the patterns I suggested.

approximately how large each of your squares were? We wanted to do 6X6. Also, how did you create the color graph?

5×5, or 6×6-ish. I did cast ons of 35-42 stitches using DK weight on 3.75mm needles. Overall the blanket came out approximately 5ft square.

The color graph I utilized MS Excel.  I modfied row eight and column width etc to ensure my math was approximately similar to what I wished to create.