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Monday, March 1, 2010

Tuck Baby Blanket on the Brother KX 350 Midgauge Machine




Boy, have I been a lousy blogger. I've been knitting, but not good about getting pictures up here and describing things. So, I thought it was time to breathe a little life back into the ol' blog. This is a baby blanket I've done for charity. A friend gave me this hot pink cotton yarn and it goes nicely as a baby blanket. Our guild gives blankets to Project Linus so I chose to knit it at our guild's knit-in last Saturday. People usually bring their plastic bed machines because they are easy to transport. I used my Brother KX 350, a 7 mm midgauge, which is totally manual.

Here's how I made it if you care to do one yourself. It could be made on any machine using your own measurements and yarn. If you also have a midgauge you could use this needle arrangement. Otherwise, do a little math to make the repeat come out right for your needle bed.
Ewrap 129 stitches and knit 6 rows to make the end plain. Use a lot of weight on your work. Mark the needle bed with a pencil using X's for the red and o's for the orange. (See the diagram below.) What you do is mark O's on the 5th needle slot then every 8th across the bed ending with 4 needle slots on the right side. Now mark X's starting with the 9th needle slot, then every 8th across the bed, ending with 9 slots on the right side.
*Set your machine to hold going both directions. Pull the needles marked with O's all the way out toward you. Those are the stitches that will tuck. Knit 5 rows. Take the carriage setting off hold so that the next row all stitches will knit off. Knit 1 row. Now pull out the needles marked with X's. Change your carriage to hold both directions again. Knit 5 rows. Take the carriage setting off hold so that the next row all stitches will knit off. Knit one row.* Repeat this 12 row repeat, from * to * for the desired length. You kind of get into a rhythm. Tuck spreads out wider than stockinette, but it also takes more rows to get the length. I wanted a square baby blanket, so when I thought it was about the right length, I measured by bringing up the lower right corner to the upper left. Once it made a triangle, I pretty much had a square. (Trick learned from a guild friend.) Then knit 6 rows plain and bind off.

Your repeat would look like this with the sides plain. (Hope that makes sense.)
It makes a honey comb kind of pattern when the tucks are alternating.

The edges decided they wanted to curl, so I found it necessary to do some crocheting around it. I did two rows of single crochet and to make the ruffle did 3 double crochets in each stitch around. Whew! That took longer than it did to make the blanket. I have a new found respect and appreciation for my other machines after doing all that hand pulling of stitches. Turned out nice, though.

7 comments:

~Marge~ said...

Lovely baby blanket! I like the color and you did a great job on the edging. I know what you mean by crocheting taking a LONG time going around!

Mar said...

Thank you for the compliment. Next time I'll use my punchcard or electronic machine. It was too much work!

tmburch said...

Hi, My name is Thelma and I am looking for free patterns that I can up items to sell at the Christmas sells. I am disabled so money is very tight with us.I have also been very ill and want to make myself so some new tops to wear this summer. I see you have a site for free patterns for machine knitting.I am hoping maybe I can find patterns in them. Thanks, Thelma

Mar said...

Hi Thelma,
Right now I don't have a pattern for a top, but there are lots of other free knitting patterns on my blog. Just scroll down on the right side until you see them. Click on one you're interested in and you'll be taken to the pattern. Maybe you can use some for the Christmas sales.

AKC in Sweden said...

So nice to find patterns at your site that are made with KX-350, as I just have become an owner of one. I just love the "coarser" structure it makes. I will try some of your patterns for that machine. Thanks for sharing!

Jackie said...

I love this pattern and as a beginner I would like to try it. I have a punchcard machine so I assume I would choose a tuck stitch card for the main part of the blanket ? How would I then get the wide border all around the edge that you do the crocheted border into ? Do I move some of the needles at the edge manually as I knit along or do it separately? Sorry if I’m asking an obvious question.

Mar said...

Doing the tuck pattern with a punch card will go much faster. Punch your card the same as the picture. Except do it this way: For tuck knitting the card will have mainly punched out holes, these are the ones that do not tuck. So to make your card like the picture, punch out the background squares.
The border around the edge is crocheted as explained in the post. I didn't move edge stitches and that's why it curled and necessitated a crocheted edge. The crocheting took as long to do as knitting. There are lots of edges on the internet if you want to try something different than the one I did.