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Crocheted blankets are an enjoyable and a rewarding project to make. They are as impressive as they are practical. They are one of my favorite thing to design and make. And every time I sit down to work on one, the same question comes to mind: how many skeins of yarn will I need to crochet this blanket?
The answer to this question is: it depends on a few things. How big is the blanket you are wanting to make? How thick or thin the yarn you have in mind? What hook size are you planning on using? And what stitch or stitches will be used in this blanket?
All of these pieces play a role in the puzzle that’s your future blanket. Let’s take a look on how each of them affects how much yarn will the crochet blanket take.
How big is the blanket you are wanting to make
As you can imagine, blankets come in all sizes and shapes. From a tiny lovey blanket to smallish baby blanket to slightly bigger lap blanket to toddler to throw to queen or king size, and all the sizes in between.
How many skeins of yarn it would take to crochet a baby blanket would differ from how many skeins of yarn it would take to crochet a lap blanket which in turn would not be the same as a number of skeins of yarn to crochet a throw blanket or a twin blanket or an afghan.
The bigger the blanket size, the more yarn it will require to complete. A king-size blanket takes about 10 times more yarn than a lovey blanket. So, first things first, decide what size of a blanket you want to make.
How thick or thin the yarn you have in mind
The yarn weight or thickness plays another big role in how much yarn a blanket will require to complete.
As yarns come in thicknesses from a thread-like to being as thick as a thumb, it would take different amounts or length of yarn to complete a blanket of the same size.
How many skeins of chunky yarn it would take to crochet a blanketwould differ from the number of skeins of jumbo yarn vs worsted yarn and so on.
So, the second thing you need to know is what yarn you are planning to use or already have on hand.
What hook size are you planning on using
Hook size affects the loose or dense the crochet fabric comes out and, even when using same yarn, different hook sizes will produce different blanket sizes.
Smaller size hooks make a crochet fabric that is dense and a large hook size gives you a blanket that has bigger spaces between the stitches and is much fluffier.
So, the third thing to decide on is what hook size you want to use.
What stitch or stitches will be used in the blanket
Different crochet stitches use different amounts of yarn.
Simpler stitches with shorter heights use less yarn and looser, taller stitches or stitches with a lot of texture or bulk to them use way more yarn.
Your choice of the stitch will affect how much yarn you’ll be using. So, the fourth thing to decide on is the type of stitch you’ll be using.
Calculate how much yarn you need
Once you have all your choices in mind, the best way to see how much yarn your blanket will take would be to create a swatch of the blanket design and do some simple calculations.
A swatch is a small sample of the blanket you want to make, using the same yarn, hook, and stitches you are planning to make. Swatches are usually made in the 4”x4” size, but for the ease of calculation, we’d make a 10”x10” swatch.
Here is how it works.
You would need a fine food scale (the one that measures in grams) and a school ruler.
- Make a 10”x10” swatch sample
- Take your swatch, and using a fine food scale, get the weight of the swatch in grams. Write this number down and set it aside. Let’s say it’s 25g
- On each yarn ball label, you can find how many yards and how many grams of yarn are in each ball. Using these numbers, you can figure out how many yards go into each gram of yarn. Let’s say you look at the label of the ball of yarn, and see that it’s 275g and contains 590yrds of yarn. That tells us that 590/275=2.15 yards in each gram of yarn
- Now, since our swatch weighs 25g and there are 2.15 yards in each g, our swatch used 25*2.15=53.75 yards of yarn
- With that in mind, let’s figure out how many of these 10”x10” swatches would make up our whole blanket. Let’s say the blanket you want is 40”x60”. 40”x60” = 2400. Our swatch is: 10”x10” = 100.
- By diving the size of the blanket by the size of the swatch, we get the number we need: 2400/100 = 24.
- Now we can get the number of yards of yarn it will take to make our blanket:
- Since 1 swatch requires 53.75 yards of yarn, and there are 24 of swatches that would make up the whole blanket, the total yardage of the yarn we would need is: 53.75*24=1290 yards.
- Since we know that each ball of yarn has 590 yards, we would need 1290/590 = 2.19 balls of this yarn to complete this blanket, or about 3 balls or skeins of yarn – two skeins will be used up completely and some of the third skein will be used up with most of it leftover.
Now, I know that math is not everyone’s cup of tea, so I have created a simple calculator where you need to do is enter the info from the yarn label, the info from your swatch, and the rest will get calculated for you.
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