Knit Fish Blanket – Post 2 – Progress Report & Color Planning Chart

I have made headway on both this blanket and the craft room/office organization since the initial post on the knit fish blanket here.  I am now working at my desk in the office every day and have been making slow progress on purging supplies as well as getting the room situated for working and crafting.  And while I am still knitting fish (and have a long way to go), I have started to sew the blanket together! 

Knitting the fish

Knit fish waiting to be added to the blanket.

I am now up to 118 fish knit!  That means I am two away from my halfway mark.  I ran out of yarn I had on hand a little while ago, and since thrift stores are currently closed in recognition of social distancing, I ended up purchasing several balls of dishcloth cotton yarn from a big box craft store with curb side pick-up last week.  With the new yarn in hand, I have been busy knitting more fish with my new selection of colors.  

With my current gauge (more on that later), I am getting five fish out of each 2.5 oz ball of worsted weight dishcloth cotton.  That means I will still need to get more yarn to finish the blanket, but I am keeping my fingers crossed I will be able to start checking thrift stores again before I run out of the yarn I have on hand.

Picking colors

I am knitting this blanket using scrap yarn and any dishcloth cotton yarn I manage to find at thrift stores (with a little new yarn thrown in when I run out of my stash).  If you are interested in knitting your own fish blanket and want to purchase yarn just for this project, you might want to think about a color pattern or design before getting started.

Here is the start of the blanket with four columns of fish sewn together. The stack of fish beside the blanket is everything I have knit so far!

To make life easier for you, I created this Knit Fish Blanket Color Template.  Print it out and round up some colored pencils or markers to layout your design and figure out how many fish in each color you want before getting started.  Feel free to print out as many copies as you need to play around with design options, but note these fish are not to scale (bad pun intended)!

If you are knitting your blanket in dishcloth cotton, you should be able to calculate your yardage based on five fish per 2.5 oz of yarn.  There will be some yarn left over from each ball, but unless you are only using 2-3 colors (in which case you may want to make a few fish out of the scraps), I would suggest erring on the side of getting extra in case your gauge is different, or you need the extra for seaming or adding a border.

Since I have started seaming the fish I have learned a few things. . .

First, not only is it important to slip the first stitch of each row, but it is also really helpful to leave a VERY long tail on each end (cast-on and cast-off) of the fish.  I have been using the yarn tails to attach the fish both nose-to-nose or tail-to-tail and along the side seams, the longer the yarn tail the better.  Not only does this prevent sewing in an extra end when I have to add yarn to seam, it also means that I have the correct color for one of the fish I am seaming.

It is also important to save the extra yarn left from the ball after knitting the fish.  While I try to leave a very long tail, sometimes it is just not enough.  Or I have used both tails already (most fish require four seams – nose, tail, and both sides) and I need some extra yarn to finish attaching a fish.  And sometimes the tail is just on the wrong side of the fish and there isn’t enough yarn left for the seam after bringing the tail back to the side I need it on.

This is a detail of the front side of the knit fish blanket so you can get a better idea of what seaming looks like as well as see the puckering from my gauge differences.

Second, the gauge at which I am currently knitting fish is very different from my gauge when knitting the long lost fish I recently rediscovered (read more about the start of this project here).  This means that there is some puckering when sewing the fish together.  I am hopeful that since dishcloth cotton shrinks a little when washed the tension issues will balance out a bit after the first washing.  If not, I will just pretend it is an intentional representation of the fish in motion, swimming through the sea.

The seaming process

The original pattern does not include much by way of instructions for attaching the fish.  I played around with a few different options before settling on the layout and technique I am currently using.

My original plans for this blanket included some sort of really awesome color gradient.  Given that I am using scrap yarn and what I can find at thrift stores for the bulk of the project, that quickly became nearly impossible.  After looking at what I had already knit, I decided to go with a totally random color pattern.  I pull each fish out of the bag as I go, my only rule is to avoid a shared seam for any fish in the same color family (i.e. no red fish directly next to, above, or below another red fish).

I started sewing the fish nose-to-nose and tail-to-tail until I had a strip the length I wanted.  At this point Adam asked if I was making a fish scarf.  

Back of the blanket – you can see the contrast color seaming on some fish, but overall I think it looks pretty tidy.

The next step is to start assembling your second strip nose-to-nose and tail-to-tail.  After connecting the first 3-4 fish, I began to attach this to the side of the first strip.  I was afraid that if I waited until I had the whole strip done I would lose track of which end attached where and accidentally sew the same colors next to each other.  

Continue to add fish nose-to-nose and tail-to-tail, attaching side seams as you go.  I keep at least one fish on the strip connected just by their nose or tail until I get to the end – it is much easier to connect noses and tails if you have not already sewn the side seam.  

Add additional strips in the same way as the second strip.  I have been unintentionally adding to both sides, the original strip is now in the middle, but without any color scheme that works just fine!

Finishing the blanket

I sew in the ends once a fish is fully enclosed – notice the loose ends in this photo go to fish who are still awaiting another fish to join them on the side.

I suggest sewing in all of your ends as you do your seaming.  Once a fish is enclosed on all four sides, I sew in any loose ends that still remain for that fish.  While there is A LOT of seaming and ends to sew in, in my experience, sewing them in as I go along makes the blanket a lot less likely to languish in the unfinished pile.  It is much easier to tackle a few dozen loose threads at the end of a project versus an entire blanket with hundreds upon hundreds of loose ends.

I still have a long way to go both in terms of knitting fish and attaching them before I can call the knit fish blanket finished.  However, now that I have started seaming, I know that the blanket definitely will need an edge of some sort and I am really leaning toward an applied i-cord.  However, in order to do that edging I will need to wait until I have finished sewing together all of the fish before adding it on. 

While I am using only solid yarn for the fish, I might use a variegated yarn for the edging to incorporate more of the colors used in the blanket.  I will make a final decision once I have all the fish seamed together based on what looks best (and what I have in sufficient quantity in my stash!).

Hoping you have a sea of colorful fish swimming off your needles!