HI! I’m new to this page, so not sure how/where to start a new thread, or if I should, so please correct me 
I’m taking on a blanket project and writing my own pattern. I’ve got that part. The fun part is figuring out how much yarn i’ll need to buy. It’s a paid project, so I want to provide as accurate as a price to my customer as I can to keep from over or undershooting by too much.
I think I may have figured it out, but being it’s my first time, it’d be awesome to get second opinions. Here’s what I know based on a test swatch:
It’ll be 6 foot wide x 4 foot tall (the 6 foot part is a must, the 4 is flexible up to 4.25 feet). It’s knit with 2 strands at the same time.
a 4 x 4 inch swatch yields 14 stitches wide x 21 stitches tall.
if i knit a row of 14 stitches and mark the starting point and ending point on the yarn, and unravel that, I get 15 inches of yarn used. If I wrap the yarn 14 times on the same needle, I get 12 inches. (?) So I went with 15.
I calculated 252 stitches wide x 256 (or 252… 256 comes out better) tall based on those above numbers/inches/stitches.
With all that said, I got 270 inches of yarn per row X’s 256 rows = 69,120 inches. convert that to feet, you get 5,760. convert that to yards, you get 1920. There’s 355 yards per skein, so divide that out and I get 5.4 or 5.5 skeins. Since i’m knitting with 2 strands at a time to thicken it, i think you multiple 5.5 x 2 and get 11 total skeins.
am I close?!
Thanks!
Hi and welcome!
I love the numbers but two things to think about: If your using 2 strands of yarn, why not do your swatch with 2 strands? Also, make sure your swatch is larger than 4x4 so that you can check gauge on the center 4 inches both for stitche and row gauge. I think it’s worth checking this since you’re scaling up from a relatively small sample (your swatch) to a 4’ x 6’ blanket.
Oh I did. I did a small scale test pieces that’s much larger than 4 inches (maybe like 10 x 8 or even bigger), then went to the center and got a 4 x 4 measurement. The test piece has 2 strands also. So all the measurements i’ve provided are keeping in mind i’ve been using 2 strands the whole time. I just thought when i got 1920 yards, that when i divided it by the number of yards in a skein, i’d have to multiple by 2 since you could look at it as either a)2 skeins would be used at the same time per color or b)i’d be knitting with both ends of the skein, so it’s really only 177.5 yards per roll. Ha! as i talked it out it made more sense LOL. all sound good?
I agree that if you’re going to use 2 strands for the project you need to swatch with 2 strands. I’m not good at figuring yardage myself so I suggest that you buy at least one extra ball and be sure it’s returnable if you don’t want to use it for something for you.
Well your calculations make sense. Maybe finally you could look for a similar pattern and check out the estimated yardage there. Good luck with this venture!
