All the yarn things…right to your inbox. Sign up here.

Get Some Zzz’s Crochet Baby Blanket

by | All Designs, Crochet, Free Patterns, Home, Kids & Toys, My Favorites

I’m going to start with the fact that I’m a terrible aunt. My new nephew was born, oh, two months ago now, and I’m finally sending him this Get Some Zzz’s crochet baby blanket. It’s filled with lots of our love, so hopefully he doesn’t hold the delay against us!

Crochet graph for a simple and modern Get Some Zzz's baby blanket!

My sister-in-law now has 3 boys (God bless her!) and she told me she’s keeping the nursery color schemes the same, full of grays and oranges, greens and turquoise. As I thought about what type of blanket to make, I quietly nixed anything that was scalloped or lacy. I thought about doing another corner-to-corner crochet blanket, but I’m a wee bit worn out after finishing the Zoodiacs blanket.

As I was surfing online for inspiration, I found these beautiful knit blankets from Yarning Made on Etsy. The simplicity of her work is stunning, and how appropriate that a baby blanket should have zzz’s featured on it, as that’s pretty much something I’m STILL missing in my life, even thought my baby is now in kindergarten! She has graciously allowed me to make a crochet version of her work, so here it is! To be honest, with you and with myself, I love the look of the typography in a knit, and the blanket done in crochet just doesn’t look quite the same. So if you’re looking for a gorgeous knit blanket for an upcoming gift, get over to her shop!

Get Some Zzz's baby blanket - a super simple and modern crochet blanket.

For my blanket, I knew I wanted the Zzz’s, but I also wanted to end in a heart, not a period. (That little decision made for the hardest part of the blanket!) I received Lion Brand Hometown USA bulky yarn in Dallas Grey and New York White for this project (The pattern, all notes, instructions, photos and opinions are 100% my own.) When the skeins arrived, I was surprised at how small the yardage was in each skein, but realized that I just miscalculated in my head. The skeins were normal size, but it’s bulky yarn so the yardage would be less, duh. I went out and bought more yarn, but as you may have seen on Instagram, the second batch of yarn was a slightly different sheen, so I saved it for the border only. The final blanket used 1 skein of the Hometown USA in New York White, and 7 skeins of Dallas Grey. It ended up being fairly heavy and super cozy, so I hope my nephew grows into it over time!

I’m working on a simple graphgan and I ran out of yarn. I bought more but because they were different lot numbers, the new yarn has a slightly noticeable difference in sheen. ???? Argh! Has that ever happened to you? To be honest, I’ve never actually noticed differences in yarn lots before, even though I’ve always heard you should buy enough yarn for the project. I don’t like overbuying (however it may seem to the contrary! ????), and I finally got burnt! Oh well,as Tim Gunn says… “Make it work!” ???? In other news, I love my new Stanwood Needlecraft yarn winder (Amazon product link in my bio), the cute cakes it makes and how I don’t have to deal with huge tangles of yarn anymore! ????????????

A photo posted by ChiWei @ One Dog Woof (@1dogwoof) on

This post is going to be less an actual pattern than just a chart, since the blanket is a simple single crochet graphgan. The body of the blanket is nothing more than row after row of single crochet stitches, only switching to the white yarn to create the wording and the heart. The graph is 50 stitches wide by 50 rows tall, but I actually worked more than 50 rows, since each stitch is not a full square. I started from the bottom of the graph and worked through the Zzz’s themselves. I used my invisible join method to join one skein to the next, and just kept working rows of Dallas Grey until I decided the blanket looked large enough. The size is totally up to you!

The heart is actually the hardest part of the blanket, in my opinion. It’s just so small that it’s difficult to really give it good definition. What I recommend is to leave very long beginning and end tails for that section and then sew the tails around the stitches to create a better definition for the heart shape. For the rest of the letters, I used individual lengths of white and grey yarn, so I didn’t have to carry any yarn across any stitches. Since there’s no back to the blanket, there’s no way to hide anything! My modular bobbin holder came in awfully handy during those few rows of Zzz’s!

Get Some Zzz's baby blanket

For the border, I wanted to try a ribbed look, but decided to just KISS (keep it simple silly). I worked double crochets evenly around the entire body of the blanket, working 2 double crochet stitches in the first and last stitches on each side, with one chain stitch in between. Then, I worked a round of single crochet stitches, with a (single crochet, 1 chain, single crochet) in the chain 1 space from the previous round.

A simple letter graphgan.

The best tutorial I’ve seen on learning how to crochet a graphgan is from The Crochet Crowd. Mikey created this incredible hour-long video on everything you need to know to read and crochet a graph pattern. I was pretty familiar with most of his techniques, but I still learned something new that kept my design cleaner than it would have been if I didn’t watch the video. I have decided to not write row by row instructions for this blanket, and will only provide the graph. Mikey got some flack on Facebook for not providing row-by-row instructions for the Catch a Wave pillow, but I agree with him – it’s more fun, and important to learn the techniques than to follow line by line – you open up an entirely new world of crochet possibilities!

Here’s the supplies and graph for the Get Some Zzz’s baby blanket!

Get some Zzz's crochet baby blanket - a fun and easy crochet project for beginners! www.1dogwoof.com

Supplies

  • 5 balls of Lion Brand Hometown USA in Dallas Grey (142g/5oz, 81 yds/74m)
  • 1 ball of Lion Brand Hometown USA in New York White (142g/5oz, 81 yds/74m)
  • Size N crochet hook
  • modular bobbin holder
  • scissors
  • embroidery needle

Get Some Zzz’s crochet baby blanket graph

The graph was created using Stitch Fiddle software. You can use it for free online or pay a small fee to open up premium features. This was my first graph created with Stitch Fiddle and I can guarantee it won’t be my last!

Simple and modern baby blanket graph for crochet graphgan.

z-blanket-4

This blanket was the perfect project to work on during the Olympics, since once I was past the letters, I could just zone out and work single crochets without looking. There were definitely some ends to weave in, but weaving into straight stitches was also much easier than weaving into c2c stitches! I really like the idea of writing short messages in simple block letters in crochet projects, so this is something I’ll probably try again in a different form sometime in the future!

z-blanket-7

 

z-blanket-3

Share your completed projects with me on Facebook (One Dog Woof) or Instagram (@1dogwoof), or just follow along to see what yarn shenanigans I’m up to!

Check out my pattern shops on Etsy and Ravelry where you can purchase printable PDFs of my latest crochet patterns. These PDFs are formatted without comments or ads, and have instructional photos at the bottom for optional printing.

I sometimes include affliate links in my supply lists. Purchasing from these merchants earns me a small commission with no extra cost to you, and goes towards supporting One Dog Woof.

Please be respectful and do not sell or distribute this pattern in any way, especially as your own. Instead, share the original blog post link! You can sell finished products made from this pattern by giving credit to One Dog Woof as the pattern designer and linking to the blog post. If you have any questions regarding distribution or translation of this pattern, please see my Terms of Use. Thank you for your consideration!

13 Comments

  1. Peach fleece

    Nice article. Your project is very good. It gives a chance to buy a quality blankets. Thanks for sharing your information with me.

  2. Nicole

    I am almost finished with this beautiful graphgan and was wondering if you had any border suggestions for a baby girl? I would like to make it a lottle more girly. Thanks!

  3. loft room insulation installers

    Climate changes, deforestation, acid rains and the endangerment of numerous
    species have gone absolutely unmanageable around
    the world. If something is broken then the landlord has to pay for it.
    Some companies aim to provide doors made of wood fiber that are eco-friendly.

  4. Mary

    Hello

    Love the zzz’s crochet baby blanket, can you tell me how to get a written version of the pattern, please

    Thank you

  5. Abigayle

    Hi, I was wondering if you had directions for the “zzz” and the heart without using the graph. If you do, is there anyway you could possibly share those? Thank you!

  6. Norine

    I would like to know also how to get printed pattern.
    And the dime sons..
    From what I can tell it’s a single crochey?……

  7. Beth

    Do you find the LB Hometown USA fuzzy; or was it good for a baby blanket? I’m modifying this to just have a simple M on it, and wanted to match the gauge of LB yarn, but unsure if it will be too fuzzy. I made my boys each a throw for their beds using LB and after a few years, it looks kind of picked over, if that makes sense? Especially with multiple washings. Thought of maybe switching to Bernat Baby Blanket yarn, the chenille stuff, instead.

  8. Danielle

    Is it 5 or 7 skeins of the main color? Materials list says one thing blog text says another.

  9. tgruy

    Thank you for the pattern. I made an afghan for my daughter and she loved it!

  10. Krys

    Hiya,

    I was just wondering if you still have the pattern available somewhere? I looked on Etsy and Craftsy and they weren’t there any more.

    Thank ya!

  11. Sharon Hightower

    Do you have a knit pattern for this blanket? I love it, but do not know how to crochet.

  12. ChiWei

    Sorry, there’s no knit version of this pattern at this time!

Shop New

[products class=”et-zoom-in” limit=”2″ columns=”1″]