When I learned that we would be reviving Berroco Plush® in a limited palette of black and white, I knew I wanted to make a blanket with cow spots. It just seemed obvious to me!
My hope was that I could figure out a repeating pattern, since charting out the entire blanket seemed a little crazy at first. My first step was to figure out the ratio of stitches to rows (because stitches aren’t square—they are typically wider than they are tall). With that information in mind, I printed some knitter’s graph paper, and started coloring in rectangles.
After much photocopying and taping things together, I determined that a repeating pattern was going to be too obvious and un-realistic. Much more coloring in of rectangles ensued, until I had charted out the entire blanket. I ran my finished chart by my colleagues here at Berroco, and initially they felt that one of my spots looked like a hippo! (It really did, actually… sorry I didn’t take a photo to show you all.) So that had to be fixed. I spent kind of a silly amount of time getting the spots exactly the way I wanted them.
All that charting was worth it I think—I love how the finished blanket turned out!
You can download the free Cow Spots baby blanket from Berroco.com now.
Love it! I wonder if it would look to repedative to reuse the charts to make it bigger?
Thanks! Unfortunately my testing indicates that repeating the charts does become obvious and inorganic-looking. Plus you would have the problem of the spots on the edges not continuing into the next part, but being squared off. If you want to make it bigger, the best thing I can offer you is to send you a blank version of the chart so that you can add additional “tiles” on the sides and top, filling in new spots for yourself. Let me know if you’d like to try that and I’ll email you.
This looks super fun!!!! I pretty much grew up on my Grams farm as a youngster.
Are the dimensions listed? You did a Fabulous job!!!👍👍❤🐄
Yes, the dimensions are listed on the pattern – it’s about 36″ square. Glad you like it!