Bo Peep Pure Botanical Garden Blanket KAL - Lavender in West Yorkshire Spinners - WYSKAL03L - Downloadable PDF

Bo Peep Pure Botanical Garden Blanket KAL – Lavender: Full Pattern Summary

This is Part Three of the Botanical Garden Colourwork Blanket Knit-Along (KAL), designed by Rosee Woodland and published by West Yorkshire Spinners. It is a free downloadable PDF pattern rated at an intermediate skill level, forming one instalment in a larger series of panels that together build a stunning, botanically inspired colourwork blanket. The finished blanket measures approximately 85cm wide by 83cm tall after blocking, making it a generous lap or decorative throw. Individual panels each measure 20cm wide by 19.5cm tall after blocking, and the knitted edging adds a neat border of 2.5cm around the assembled piece.

What Is Being Made

The project is a colourwork blanket constructed from multiple individual knitted panels that are joined together and finished with a picked-up border edging. The Lavender colourway version of this KAL uses the palette associated with soft purple and botanical tones, reflecting the floral and garden-inspired aesthetic of the overall design series. The blanket is built panel by panel across the KAL instalments, with Part Three contributing its own distinct botanical motif to the growing patchwork of colourwork squares.

An optional finishing touch involves backing the blanket with one metre of cotton jersey fabric sewn with matching polyester thread, giving the finished piece a polished, professional look and adding warmth and structure.

Techniques Used

• Stranded colourwork – The primary technique used across the blanket panels, where two or more yarn colours are carried across the back of the work simultaneously, creating the characteristic floats on the wrong side. This technique requires consistent tension management to ensure the fabric lies flat and the motifs appear crisp.
• Strandtarsia colourwork – A hybrid technique combining elements of both stranded knitting and intarsia. It is used in sections of the panels where colour areas are larger or more isolated, reducing the length of floats and allowing for cleaner colour separation without the bulk of long strands.
• Circular knitting for edging – The border is worked using a long circular needle, picking up stitches around the perimeter of the assembled blanket. Stitch markers, including hinged markers and a contrast colour marker, are used to navigate corners and track progress around the edging.
• Blocking – An essential finishing step for colourwork knitting, blocking evens out stitches, opens up the fabric, and brings the panels to their stated measurements. Both pre- and post-blocking tensions are noted in the pattern, underlining how significantly blocking affects the final dimensions.
• Optional fabric backing – Sewing a cotton jersey backing onto the finished blanket is offered as an optional technique for those who wish to conceal the wrong side floats and add extra body to the piece.

Stitches Used

• Stranded colourwork stitches – Worked flat on straight needles for the individual panels, following a charted motif with multiple colours per row.
• Strandtarsia stitches – Used within the panel charts where the design calls for isolated colour blocks, blending the float management of stranded knitting with the separate yarn bobbin approach of intarsia.
• Edging stitches – Worked in the round on a circular needle, the edging is a colourwork border picked up around all four sides of the assembled blanket, with corner shaping managed via stitch markers.

Materials

Yarn

• West Yorkshire Spinners Bo Peep Pure DK – The specified yarn for the blanket panels. Bo Peep Pure DK is a smooth, round, double knitting weight yarn known for its clarity of stitch definition, making it particularly well suited to colourwork projects where crisp motif edges are desirable. Its DK weight pairs perfectly with the 4mm needles called for in the pattern.
• The Lavender colourway palette is used in this version of the KAL, giving the blanket its soft, botanical character.

Needles and Notions

• 4mm (UK8 / US6) straight or standard knitting needles – Used for knitting