Starflower Blanket: Lace Hexagons Forever!

There’s something about knit blankets that I just keep coming back to. A blanket is such a BIG, MEATY, SIGNIFICANT knitting project, yet at the same time, I find it full of rhythmic satisfaction. A blanket gives me the comforting certainty that I can just keep knitting for hours…days…months even!

Starflower, the newest addition to our popular range of knit blanket patterns, offers that delicious, rhythmic comfort. Combining strong geometries with floral motifs and abundant texture, it looks unreasonably complex, but despite appearances, the hexagons aren’t too difficult to knit. Once you’ve made a few, you’ll only glance back at the pattern occasionally.

If you liked Vivid, Polygon, and Pop, then Starflower is definitely your kind of knit. With delicate, over-the-top, heirloom quality, Starflower is perfect for the modern granny in all of us!

Knit Starflower in any yarn!

For convenience, the Starflower blanket pattern includes instructions for three yarn weights: sock / sport, DK, and worsted / aran.

The design is modular, so it can be made in any yarn weight – and you can seam it together to make any finished shape, too. We made these blankets rectangular, but you don’t have to!

Make it monochrome or mad colour

This blanket can have a very different finished effect, depending on whether you make it in a single colour or in a fabulous rainbow. Naturally, we tried it both ways.

First, we made it in a soft, warm grey with John Arbon Knit By Numbers DK (colourway KBN12). This super soft organic merino from the Falkland Islands is one of my favourite yarns, and it comes in 109 colours! I bet you’ll find one that you love in the mix.

In a single colour, the crisp geometries of this design really shine. Each hexagon is made of six vivid little slices, and the exposed selvedge seaming method creates a satisfying whole of tumbling triangles and overlapping hexagonal motifs that make me look, and then look again, as my eye discovers pattern after pattern. I’m drawn to triangular pieces that mirror each other. The spokes of each motif align across diagonals, creating flowers afloat on a sea of garter stitch. The mosaic tile quality of the design is much more apparent when you’re not distracted by the colours and the relationship of one to the next.

But…we do love a rainbow here at Tin Can Knits! So this design wouldn’t be complete without a multi-colour version, which we made in a new yarn from John Arbon, Yarnadelic Worsted, which comes in a pleasing palette of complex, heathered shades. Of course, we had to use all 18 shades in this rainbow beauty!

The details!

This blanket is knit one hexagonal flower at a time. The flower motifs are worked starting at the centre using the pinhole cast-on method. Then they’re worked in rounds of increasing length out to the bind-off edge.

The method is nearly the same as described in the Vivid blanket tutorial. By the time the rounds are getting long, you’re nearly done! It’s an easy bind off, and you’re back to the exciting beginning again.

Once you’ve laid out the motifs, pushed them around, and decided on your layout, you can use the yarn tails to seam the pieces together, which means a few less ends to weave in! We used a slip-stitch crochet seam to form the geometry of raised selvedges. Lastly, for simplicity, you can leave the edges of the blanket raw or work an i-cord edge around for a crisp finish, as we have done here.

Decisions, decisions…

So, which Starflower blanket do you love more? Which would you like to have draped over your couch, and which would you prefer to knit? It’s a tough call, eh? I think I’d prefer to HAVE a single-colour blanket but KNIT a multi-coloured one. It’s certainly more fun to plot out, craft, and assemble a rainbow!

Bonus: Starflower is also an enjoyable way to use up all those little leftovers from other finished projects.

~ Emily

Lullaby

POP

Fly Away

Bounce

Vivid

Dogwood