Shortly after Christmas 2024, a friend of mine announced her pregnancy, the first child for her and her partner. Of course, I had to whip out my hooks. My problem was, which pattern to choose to make this baby blanket? I wanted to make her an heirloom blanket, to be passed down through the generations.
I may have sandboxed myself to a niche, but when I crochet, I prefer to have a pattern that varies from row to row. That means granny squares are out, along with things like the moss stitch. I like change, texture, and complexity. The pattern for Doo-Dad was sitting in my collection, waiting for the right time to start.
I collect patterns, but don’t often start new ones unless I have a reason. I crochet for other people, as gifts or for charity raffles, and when I have a reason, I go through my collection and find inspiration there. Doo-Dad caught my eye as I leafed through my folder, and I decided to make it for my friend.
Doo-Dad is a pattern written in US terminology by Vanessa at Hooked on Sunshine, explicitly designed as a baby blanket. It features a central square of 15 rows, with subsequent 15-row repeats that grow the blanket until you reach your desired size. I flicked through the pattern and decided it would be fast to whip up. It would make the perfect gift for my friend. It is stunning and would make the perfect gift that could be handed down through the generations. When you see the finished product, you’ll agree that this is an heirloom blanket.
The Yarn
I knew the colours my friend preferred. My stash contained the perfect yarn. I took a quick picture for her and got the thumbs up. This would be one of two hints I gave her as to what I was making. She got a glimpse of the folded blanket when it was halfway done, and that was all she got! The rest of it was intended to be a surprise.
My yarn of choice is a 50% cotton, 50% acrylic four-strand unplied yarn hand-wound by German company Garnmanufaktur, called a Lola Bobbel. I purchased these Lolas from Bellemae Yarns. Some are preorder-only, while others are permanently in stock.
The yarn is a weight 2 or a fine weight yarn. It is made from four threads wound together into a cake. But they are not twisted together, which can be difficult for beginners to work with.
Pastel Dreams is a very popular colourway and is typically in stock at Bellemae in the 300g size. It’s truly a beautiful yarn and perfect for a baby blanket.
My friend likes pastel colours. This was absolutely the perfect yarn for her heirloom blanket. With the mix of fibres, it should not fade with washing or rot like pure cotton will. It feels wonderfully soft and will continue to soften over time. When I create something intended to be loved for decades, I want an heirloom quality yarn. This yarn should create a nice blanket suitable for cool days in the tropics and sub-tropics.
Shopping from my Stash
I had a 300g cake of Pastel Dreams in my stash – 1125m. Making Doo-Dad in the size I wanted would require more yarn than I had, so I ordered a second cake from Bellemae and got started while I waited for the second cake to arrive. With this weight of yarn, you get 375m of yarn to 100g, or 1g = 3.75m.
Pastel Dream features 13 colour changes. I wanted to control the colour changes as I crocheted, because I have a hate for changing colours mid-row or round unless the pattern specifically calls for it. I used my 4mm Clover hook and crocheted straight from the cake to start. Yes, it makes my life harder, but I don’t care. It’s all about the aesthetics. Starting with the peach, I made the central square, then cut the cake and removed the rest of the peach colour before joining the yarn to begin the 15 row repeats with the peach/pink.
By this time, the second cake had arrived, and I took out my yarn winder and began winding the cakes down into the individual colours. You can purchase Pastel Dream as a ‘Bobbel Box’, where instead of one cake, you have all the colours separated into their individual components in larger quantities for bigger projects or for intricate colourwork. I did not have time for this to be custom-made and shipped to Australia from Germany, so I used what I had on hand and ordered from Bellemae’s in-stock selection to get the quantity of yarn I needed. Can you tell that this is shaping up to be an heirloom blanket just from the yarn alone?
Colour Planning
I started Doo-Dad around February 17 2025, and crocheted continuously for two months. As I have an injury to my wrist that affects how long I can crochet, I typically never crochet for more than an hour at a time before putting it aside. The central square came together reasonably quickly, as rounds are short. The central square is unique in that I stopped using the peach colour long before I ran out of it. I wanted to highlight the square and then let the colours gently change through the blanket.
I made a conscious choice to ensure colours changed at round 23-24, so round 25, with its feature popcorn stitch, was a different colour to the 3dc-cluster stitch (US term) below it. It isn’t required in the pattern, and the first instance was coincidental, but I liked it, so I made it a conscious part of the pattern. Look close at the popcorn stitches and you might be able to see this change.
Modifying Stitches
I chose to modify one of the stitches to elongate it, which I found more aesthetically pleasing. A 3dc-cl, or three double crochet cluster stitch (US term), is created using the left method, compare to my method on the right.
3dc-cl
YO, insert hook into stitch, pull up loop: 3 loops on hook.
YO, pull through 2 loops: 2 loops on hook.
YO, insert hook into same stitch, pull up loop: 4 loops on hook.
YO, pull through 2 loops: 3 loops on hook.
YO, insert hook into same stitch, pull up loop: 5 loops on hook.
YO, pull through 2 loops: 4 loops on hook.
YO, pull through all 4 loops.
Elongated 3dc-cl
YO, insert hook into stitch, pull up loop: 3 loops on hook.
YO, pull through 2 loops: 2 loops on hook.
YO, insert hook into same stitch, pull up loop: 4 loops on hook.
YO, pull through 2 loops: 3 loops on hook.
YO, insert hook into same stitch, pull up loop: 5 loops on hook.
YO, pull through 2 loops: 4 loops on hook.
YO, pull through 2 loops: 3 loops on hook.
YO, pull through all 3 loops.
If you look very closely at the sample of crochet to the right, you might be able to spot the difference between the elongated 3dc-cl and the 3dc-cl.
The last two stitches in the row being worked are normal 3dc-cl. All the ones before it are my extended version. They are slightly taller with a loop that sweeps across the top of the cluster, which I liked.
Note that I am left-handed. My stitches lean to the right.
I added this extra step while experimenting with the stitch and liked it, so I continued with it. There is a 2dc-cl stitch that appears a couple of times in the pattern, and I simply modified the stitch in the same manner. The difference is subtle, and most people probably wouldn’t notice. It’s just a way I put my own spin on the project.
I followed the rest of the pattern as instructed. No other modifications were made to the body of the blanket.
Repeat Rows
Once the central square is complete, you repeat a 15-row pattern until you reach the desired size. I decided to complete the repeats until I reached about 1m x 1m in size.
The pattern gives the stitch count for each round of repeats, which is refreshing after many that assume you’ll follow the instructions exactly and ‘get it right’. Being able to count when things went wonky – and they did when I wasn’t paying close enough attention – made it much easier to get back on track.
Weaving Ends
Every few rows, I opted to weave in the ends. Most colours had four tails to weave in, and as this is an unplied yarn, threads were everywhere!
Weaving them in and trimming them short made this usually tedious ‘finishing’ job much less overwhelming. I did not trim close to the project at this point, but left a tail where I could thread a small needle and continue to weave if needed.
With Lola, the strands are not plied, or twisted together. They are loose threads. I opted to split the end and weave in 2 strands one direction, then weave in the other 2 threads in the other direction.
Convention is to weave about 5cm in, switching direction 3 times. As it’s intended to be an heirloom, I wove in at least 15 cm for every single split tail. It took forever. But I want it to last decades. If a thread works it’s way loose, the owner can snip it close without fear it will unravel, many, many times throughout the blanket’s life. Heirloom to me means generational heritage. That definition is at the front of my mind as I work, no matter the medium.
The Border
The pattern gives two options for a border. I went with the one that had shell stitches as I do prefer the look of it. This is where I deviated from the pattern again, doing only one round of shells. I modified the corners to please my eye, then finished it off, wove in the rest of the ends and called it complete.
I deliberately saved the final colour, the pale green, for the border. I am incredibly particular about colour transitions and have had custom runs of colours made to complete projects in the exact colours I want.
Finishing Steps
Blocking and a Big Stuff Up
I block my projects. Blocking allows the project to take its final, polished form. It just finishes the project off perfectly. Lolas are 50% cotton, 50% acrylic, so steam blocking will set the stitches and give them a ‘memory’. Washing the project in hot water (not recommended!) will undo this memory.
I had a rapidly approaching deadline. I wanted to block the blanket as fast as I could and send it off. I washed it in my sink with wool wash, then rolled and pressed in towels to remove most of the water. With this initial wash done, I started pinning it out – only to have a storm roll in. I threw it on top of the ute’s bonnet in the carport, but then watched the dirt turn to mud, so I took it inside.
I live in a small house with very little floor space. It would not fit inside, except in one of two places: the floor of the soap-curing room, or on our bed.
I decided to block it on the floor of the curing room, since it would take quite some time to dry. Stretched it to full size, pinned it out carefully, then gave it a good steaming. I left the fan on it overnight to let it dry and went back the next day.
To the left, I have prepared Doo-Dad for blocking. The ruler is for straight edges. 16 mats are locked together. My blocking combs and pins are ready.
It didn’t need a lot of blocking. My tension remained even through the project.
The Next Day
I took all the pins out, shook it out, bundled it up and left the room. Went to take some shots of it spread out over the bed and discovered that the wet yarn had sucked up the smells of the curing room!
You cannot imagine the devastation I felt discovering this! Babies can’t have something that reeks of strong smells! I had no more time to make something else, and no quick-to-work-up pattern would satisfy my requirement for ‘heirloom’. The only solution was to eliminate that overwhelming fragrance somehow.
Wash ‘n’ Dry 1
I bagged it up in a washing bag, threw it into my washing machine with some vinegar, and ran it on the delicate wash cycle. I then smelled it again, threw it back into the washing machine with some Biozet enzymatic laundry powder, and reran the wash. When it came out, I couldn’t smell much—just a hint of fragrance.
I have a weird sense of smell. I struggle to smell many things. But when I can, I can pick out notes in the fragrance and duplicate what I can smell. I wasn’t quite sure what I was smelling, so I ran the blanket through the tumble dryer until it was merely damp. Then I could smell the fragrance.
I dumped the entire laundry bag of blanket into a bucket of baking soda and put the lid on to pull any smell out, and left it for a day. Opening the bucket, I couldn’t smell it as strongly as I had at first. This was promising.
Wash ‘n’ Dry 2
It went straight back into the wash with the Biozet, and I left it soaking for several hours instead of just letting the wash continue through its cycle. When it got to the rinse cycle, I gave it a good dose of white vinegar. This did the trick. When it came out of the wash, it was odourless. I threw it into the dryer again and once more pulled it out when it was merely damp.
I blocked it again, this time placing the mats on the king-size bed instead of the floor of the curing room, and turned the fan on full to blast it dry.
I did, however, find an unexpected upside to this disaster. My knots and woven ends didn’t undo or poke out. That blanket had a stress test long before the baby got hold of it! The blanket needs to withstand the ‘abuse’ of the washing machine and dryer. A baby will love the blanket. Baby isn’t going to leave it pristine. The blanket will be washed many times in its life.
With blocking done, the blanket reached a size of 1.05m x 1.05m. Just as I wanted. I trimmed down the last tails and took it for a photo shoot. It is, honestly, one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever created.
The Last Touches
I crocheted a small granny square with some of the leftover yarn. Then I wrote a brief letter to the parents, including the facts about the blanket, the washing instructions, and a wish for the baby, and then folded it up. I placed the letter, the original yarn band, and the granny square inside a washing bag, and included it in the parcel.
I always include a sample swatch or two with my projects so that the recipient can wash and dry it to test their laundry products on a sacrificial piece, rather than on the large heirloom projects that have had countless hours invested in them. If a product is going to destroy the heirloom project, I’m sure everyone would rather it be the disposable swatch than the project itself.
With the blanket nearly folded, I wrapped it and the washing bag full of goodies in white tissue paper, added a ribbon, and posted it off. It arrived about 10 days before the baby did! I sure cut that fine!
Finishing Up
With the project now finished and on its way to its new owners, I had time to clean up. I retrieved the yarn winder again and reassembled all the individual cakes into one large cake for later use. I weighted the yarn. 136g remained from two 300g cakes. Converting this to length, I have 611m left if I wish to use it for another, smaller project. This also means that the blanket weighed 464g, and took up 1,740m of yarn. That’s a ton of stitches!
Have you ever measured how much yarn you use in a single stitch? I have, as it’s a handy tool to estimate if I need to change colours rather than playing yarn chicken. One of my (US) doubles with Lola yarn takes up 8cm of yarn. If this project were purely doubles, that would be 21,750 stitches. Crocheting someone a multi-month project is truly a labour of love.
Would I make Doo-Dad again? Absolutely. I enjoyed the project. It’s an intermediate-level project. Skilled beginners looking to stretch their skills will find this a good project. The pattern is well-written. Sharp photos are there to guide. I could get into a groove with each row. It satisfied my need for constant change. It looks stunning, feels lovely in the hand, and most importantly, the baby’s parents loved it. It will become an heirloom to be passed down through the generations.
Leave a Comment