Ripple Baby Blanket with Iris Stitch Border

I’m feeling pretty pleased with myself! I imagined this baby blanket and then I made this baby blanket and the two things pretty much match! This does not always happen so I’m feeling chuffed!

I have really enjoyed making this navy and white striped ripple blanket with its vibrant golden yellow border. I can see in these photos that this blanket looks more black than navy a lot of the time. I promise you it is in fact a dark navy. I just don’t have the photography skills or equipment to make it more true to life, you’ll just have to trust me on this one!

If you’ve never crocheted before and have always wanted to learn how to then you might like to check out my article “What you need to get started Crochet” that lists the essentials that you’ll need to get going.

As I’ve done before with my baby blanket posts I’m not sharing a complete pattern here. I’ve taken 2 patterns that already exist online and just merged the two together. It would not be right or fair if I start writing out these patterns as if they were my own. Instead I’m going to go through what I did, what I used and share the links to the patterns and tutorials that I used. Then hopefully, if you’d like to make a similar blanket yourself, you’ll have all the information that you need.

To make a ripple baby blanket with an iris stitch border you will need:

3 x 100g balls of navy DK yarn

1 x 100g ball of white DK yarn

1 x 100g ball of yellow DK yarn

5mm crochet hook

I used the Women’s Institute Premium Acrylic DK yarn from Hobbycraft. It’s reasonably priced and I know it washes well - important for anything for babies, right?

Finished size: 86cm x 94cm (37” x 34”)

Weirdly, for someone who crochets quite a lot I’d never done a ripple blanket before; shocker eh?

There are a million tutorials on how to do a ripple blanket online. I like the video’s from Bella Coco if I’m learning anything new and they are the ones I’d always recommend to anyone starting out. If you’re using US crochet terms then you might find this one from Daisy Farm Crafts easier to follow - both are great.

You can make a ripple pattern with any multiple of 12 chain plus 3 (the 3 chain is for your first stitch of the next row) so you can make a ripple blanket any size you like.

I started with a 123 chain, so I had 120 stitches per row. Without the border my blanket ended up 84cm (33”)

I worked the pattern with 5 rows of navy followed by one row of white, ending with a block of 5 rows of navy.

This made it almost but not exactly square. The ‘without border’ dimensions are 84cm (33’) x 76cm (30”). I decided that for me it was more important to have an even number of pattern repeats than for the blanket be completely square.

I worked 9 white rows in total so 10 sets of 5 x navy.

Once that was finished I did a row of navy on each wavy edge to ‘square off’. Back to Bella Coco for another brilliant little video to show you how! It’s a combo of double crochet, half trebles and trebles. Do remember if you are used to US terms that all the Bella Coco videos are UK terms.

Once the edges are all squares, it’s on to the border. I wanted a slightly lacy border to contrast with the bold wave but nothing too over the top fancy. When I saw this iris stitch border tutorial from Lullaby Lodge I knew that was just what I had in mind.

I followed Catherine’s instructions pretty much as is. She has some tips for the corners if the stitch count isn’t perfect for the iris stitch which was really helpful as mine was a few out. Lucky that crochet is so forgiving right?

Three rounds of the border felt just right and used up pretty much all of my 100g ball of yellow yarn so that was good!

You can make a ripple pattern with any multiple of 12 chain (plus 3 for your first stitch) so it’s easy to make a smaller or larger blanket.

I am now officially in love with the ripple blanket pattern. It worked up SO quickly, doesn’t leave you with TOO many ends to sew in and it’s perfect to do when watching TV because once you’ve done a few rows the pattern is easy to maintain. Plus it looks good (or at least I think it does!)

I do love a photo of a folded blanket or two! (you can find the details for the dotty blanket underneath here)

I decided to pretty this blanket up last minute so I added some flowers in two of the corners made with some of the left over yellow and white yarn.

I did manage to get it made and posted off before baby was due and had a lovely photo back to show it in use a month later :-)

Have you made a ripple blanket? Did you love it as much as I did? Would you add a lace border like I did or do you prefer to leave the edges wavy?

I’ll be sharing this blanket at some of these link ups

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