Designing a Preemie Blanket

As luck would have it, I had to do a lot of shelving yesterday at the library and that gave me time to work out the details of the preemie blanket I am trying to design. I already knew that I wanted to use green, pink and yellow in the blanket. I wanted to make 3 strips to make the finishing easier. Each strip would consist of 3 6" blocks of color. The first and last strip would be green/pink/green and the middle strip would be pink/yellow/pink. That was the easy part. The hard part was deciding which stitch pattern to use with each color.

I am using Bernat Softee Baby, and the pink is actually a pink and white marl. So I knew that I wanted to use a smoother stitch with that yarn. I settled on just dc for the pink squares. I also knew that I wanted more texture in the green and yellow squares as a contrast. But I had to struggle a bit to find enough but not too much texture.

My first attempt was a stitch pattern consisting of V and puff stitches. (Sorry about the fuzziness of the picture - I don't take good pictures with the super macro function.)
I like the stitch pattern, but it wasn't right for the blanket. It was too textured but not soft enough. I think it might make a nice shawl some day, though. So I looked through more pattern books and gave it some thought while I was shelving away. I finally settled on extended stitches, and I really like the results.

With the green yarn, I used one row of esc and one row of edc. The stitches are soft and just textured enough. As a matter of fact, I am thinking about making another blanket with just those 2 rows. As much fun as designing is, I do want to make some more blankets faster so I have more to donate.

I won't have time to post the next couple of days. I have to be up and out early both days. But hopefully I will have more to show you on this project when I return over the weekend. I can't wait to see the yellow added in!