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Craft a delightful Temperature Baby Blanket for the hidden baby days!

This new concept temperature baby blanket celebrates your pregnancy days with the new light of your life.

Remember this?

Your belly is huge, you waddle like a duck, but your arms are empty and you’re sweltering in the heat.

Or it’s freezing outside, but you have to get groceries or take your toddler to the clinic, but you don’t have a coat that will fasten over your swelling midsection. So you throw a blanket around you hoping you don’t freeze.

Commemorate those days you weathered for your child when he was just an image on an ultrasound but you couldn’t kiss her sweet face!

Temperature Pregnancy Baby Blanket ~ And it’s mostly single crochet!

Since I crocheted a pregnancy blanket for my new granddaughter Belle (hers is the Phases of the Moon), I wanted to also make a blanket to honor the months my grandson was in utero. He’s almost 4 years old now. 

To be honest, temperature blankets haven’t been my preferred style. Maybe it’s because they aren’t consistent in the color changes. BUT, I used white throughout as a cohesive element, and I quite like it!

The blanket is nine squares, one for each month. The spike stitches in white remind me of the heartbeat of the treasure within.

4 steps

Basically, you’re four steps away from a temperature baby blanket that celebrates the actual first nine months of your baby’s life.

• Planning
• Squares
• Joining
• Border

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1. Plan the temperature baby blanket

Calculate the conception date

To begin a pregnancy blanket, it is necessary to calculate the conception date. You can figure that out in one of these ways:

     1.     Use the estimated due date from the doctor. Then count back 40 weeks on the calendar.

OR

     2.     If you know the first date of the last menses before pregnancy, then add two weeks for an estimated conception date. Then count the weeks to the delivery date.

Make a chart

Choose your colors

After raiding my stash of yarn, I chose a color to represent each set of ten temperatures. Since the high and low temperatures only occurred a few times, I could use colors that I only had a little of. You make that judgment call. But you’ll need 4 skeins of white. I used the 6 oz. Caron Simply Soft yarns mostly. Some are mystery acrylics from deep in the stash cupboard.

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2. Crochet the squares

The nine squares

• Each square begins with a row of white single crochet.
• The pattern is one spike stitch row after two temperature rows. The white spike goes down into the previous white spike row. Place the spikes wherever you choose. I basically kept 6 stitches in between each spike, but randomly placed the first spike in each white row.
• Each square has 48 rows total. If needed, add row(s) of white single crochet to make all the squares equal.
• Follow your color chart for each row
• Change yarn colors in your preferred method

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Here’s a simple pattern for the Temperature Baby Blanket

Chain 65 (Or whatever you choose to get the size you want)

Row 1: white sc across, turn

Row 2: Ch1, conception day temperature color - sc across, turn

Row 3: Ch1, next color in your plan – sc across, turn

Row 4: Ch1, sc spike stitches down into previous white row, turn

Rows 5, 6: Color rows

Row 7: White spike stitch row

Continue following your color chart: 2 rows color, 1 row white spike stitch, etc. until you have 48 total rows in the square.

Finish the square

Sc all around each square with white so that the edges lie flat. I put one sc in each row along the sides, but it was too much and made the join too wavy. So I skipped some stitches in the course of each side to make about 40 stitches per side. (Use your judgment for your own blanket. I frogged a couple times here and there to make it right.)

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3. The joining

I love the continuous flat braid join!

Since the squares for this temperature baby blanket are all single crochet, I wanted a different texture for the joinings. I followed Cheryl Bennett's directions at Crochet365Knittoo to join the 9 temperature spike squares with the continuous flat braid join. (She uses it for a lovely Happily Ever Afghan!)

 

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4. The border

I love the flat braid join so much that I wanted the same braid all around the blanket, which Cheryl didn't do. But this join requires a separate edge to "braid" with the edge on the squares.

Make the outside braid

So, I made a chain long enough to go all around the temperature baby blanket. Then I turned and single-crocheted one row. That set me up to use the flat braid join to connect this long strip to the base edge of the blanket.

Two things are important to be able to do this adequately.

1.     Count around to get as close to the correct number of stitches as possible.

2.     Use the single crochet side of the strip to join with the edge of the blanket. (Your ch/sc strip faces inward toward the blanket.)

Figure the number of stitches

12 sides of squares     12 x 40 = 480

8 flat braid joinings    8 x 4 = 32

4 corners                     4 x 6 = 24

480 + 32 + 24 = 536 stitches for the chain

I had an uh-oh ~ here's how I fixed it

The truth is, this was too many for my blanket for some reason. I had extra sc left over after joining all the way around. Did I panic? Well, maybe for a split second. Then I breathed real deep, picked up my scissors, and snipped a stitch at the end of the extra. Using a yarn needle, I teased the extra stitches apart back to where I needed. There were two yarn ends from the unravel, so I tied them together and stitched them to the beginning of the round. Once I wove in the ends, the fix was invisible. Whew! Disaster averted!

Follow Cheryl Bennett's directions for the flat braid join. In each corner, I made 3 joinings instead of one. (She didn't do any of this. I borrowed her lovely join and made it work for this purpose. ;-) ) Start joining your strip with one in a corner. After joining all the way around, you will then do the 2 more joins in that corner. Then slip stitch and finish. 

Simple sc for the rest of the border

For the rest of the border, I made one row of sc for each of the colors in my pattern. This makes it easy to explain the blanket to enquiring minds. I had 8 colors, so 8 rows of sc. I made (sc, ch1, sc) in each corner. Then a final row of white sc.

Here you can be finished, if you wish! Wrap your new little arrival with a colorful hug!

Blocking acrylic

I wanted to block this blanket to retain its shape, so I bought this steamer on Amazon. You can use a steam iron, but I worried that I would melt the yarn!

This steamer is so simple to use and quick to heat up! The last steamer I had was old and required me to add salt to the water. Plus, it was really small.  

I've heard some people say that you can't block acrylic yarn. But you can!  Read more here. 

Border choices  ~ illustrated

Add a triangle shell edge to echo the spikes in the squares

I really like the simple, straightedge row by row finish for this crochet temperature baby blanket. But having seen the Cheryl's triangle edge border, I wanted to try it. The pointy edge echoes the spikes in the temperature blanket squares. So you have a choice of borders for your temperature baby blanket! 

Let me know in the Comments how my instructions worked for you. I'm not a pattern writer, but I love to share my projects with you!

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Greetings!

I'm Susan, a recently retired elementary school teacher, reading specialist and happy grandma! Since retirement, I'm beginning to focus my energies on a list of desired extracurricular activities for which there has been no time, until now.

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