Make a beautiful baby blanket out of knitted squares.

Knitting squares to make a baby blanket it not only a great way to learn how to knit, but you can make a beautiful and unique blanket which will be with a child for many years.

You can also be very creative using a variety of knitting stitches and the beautiful yarns available today, as you can see from the laid out squares here.

This is another one of my mother, Zanny's blankets, which she has just completed but is yet to sew up.

Traditionally baby blankets have been made in whites and pastels, but babies are stimulated by colours and are able to detect subtle shifts in shades as early as two months, so surround them with a palette of beautiful colours.

Pretty patterns and rainbow colours
Make it unique too, by varying the knitting stitches to create different textures and surfaces for them to touch and feel. Many of the yarns today are so soft and gentle to touch, so chose them not only for colour but for feel as well. Yarns that are a blend of wool, silk, alpaca and even bamboo are warm and delicate to the skin.

Like all craft work, it is best to plan your baby blanket carefully from the start. Start with two main colours, as shown in the blanket pictured – purple and turquoise. Then add another two to three colours which either tone in – the dusty pink and the dove grey – or are blended in by a mutual colour, in this case the multicoloured pastel wool which contains tones of most of the other four colours. Four to five colours is usually enough. Any more can make such a small blanket look messy.

These square knitting patterns, like all our square instructions, use 8 ply yarn and 6mm (4UK/10 USA) needles. There are 24 squares, 6 x 6 inches (15 x 15 cms) arranged in six rows of four squares. Despite choosing 8 ply yarn, there will be some variation in the square sizes. Don't worry about this, it is easy to slightly stretch the squares to fit each other when sewing up. Also as demonstrated here, changing needle sizes dramatically alters the size and feel of the square, so you can experiment with this as well if you want more or less squares in your baby blanket.

If you are learning to knit, then perhaps try the simpler knitting stitches to start, although once you have mastered knit and purl stitches, there is no end to the wonderful knitting patterns you can make.

And when you are finished knitting your beautiful and unique baby blanket, please use your wool scraps to knit one 8 x 8" square (or more) to send to Africa to make blankets for AIDS orphans.

Please also join Square Circle ezine for stories of your efforts to help keep these children warm and for new baby blanket patterns.