How Much Yarn for a Baby Blanket? Yardage Guide

Baby blankets are small, which makes them one of the most beginner-friendly projects to start with. It also makes them easy to get wrong at the yarn shop, because a lovey and a toddler blanket are both called baby blankets and one takes nearly nine times the yarn of the other.

Start by selecting a size, then follow our breakdown of the yard ranges for both knitting and crocheting, so you get the correct amount for your craft.

What this article covers:

• Baby Blanket Sizes, from Lovey to Toddler
• How Much Yarn to Knit a Baby Blanket
• How Much Yarn to Crochet a Baby Blanket
• Why Your Total Might Increase or Decrease
• How Much Yarn Should You Buy for Your Baby Blanket?
• Choosing Yarn a Baby Can Snuggle

Baby Blanket Sizes, from Lovey to Toddler

Pick your size first, because it affects more of your yardage than anything else. A toddler blanket covers up to ten times the area of a lovey, so the two need very different amounts of yarn.

These are just the general sizes rather than rules. A handmade blanket can be whatever size fits the baby you’re making it for.

How Much Yarn to Knit a Baby Blanket

We like DK (Double-Knitting) weight yarn for baby blankets because it makes a light and drapey blanket for a little one. It’s a medium-light weight yarn that’s one step thinner than worsted (medium thickness and weight). These are the yardage ranges for DK-weight yarn:

• Lovey: 150 to 260 yards
• Stroller blanket: 700 to 1,250 yards
• Receiving blanket: 850 to 1,500 yards
• Crib blanket: 950 to 1,700 yards
• Toddler blanket: 1,350 to 2,300 yards

How Much Yarn to Crochet a Baby Blanket

Crochet uses about 30% more yarn than knitting to cover the same space, which means the ranges are a little higher than with knitting. Like before, they're for DK weight:

• Lovey: 195 to 340 yards
• Stroller blanket: 900 to 1,650 yards
• Receiving blanket: 1,100 to 1,950 yards
• Crib blanket: 1,200 to 2,200 yards
• Toddler blanket: 1,700 to 3,000 yards

Why Your Total Might Increase or Decrease

Two people can follow the same pattern for making a blanket with the same yarn and still need different amounts. This is what we've found changes the amount you need:

• Stitch pattern: Textured stitches pull extra yarn in behind the fabric, so bobbles, popcorn stitches, puff stitches, cables, and seed stitch all cost you more. Open, lacy stitches use less. Dense stitches like single crochet or garter stitch use more.
• Hook or needle size: Going up a size creates looser, more open stitches, which saves a little yarn. It also makes a floppier blanket, so choose based on the end result you want rather than for saving on yarn.
• Tension: This is how tightly you hold the yarn as you work, and it’s the biggest variable for you as an individual. If you work tightly, you’ll pack more stitches into every inch, which takes more yarn.
• Yarn weight: Thinner yarns take more yards to cover the same space, while thicker ones cover it with fewer. These ranges are for DK, so a chunky yarn would need noticeably less.
• Borders and extras: The yardage for borders and extras doesn’t always sit neatly in the same calculations as the blanket itself. Each round for a border needs quite a bit more yarn than the edge is wide or long, and that scales with the blanket, so set aside a skein for a lovey or stroller size and two or more for a toddler blanket. Extras like fringes or appliqués are harder to pin down, since they sit outside the blanket’s measurements and don’t scale as precisely with its size.

How Much Yarn Should You Buy for Your Baby Blanket?

For a first baby blanket, buy toward the top of your range.

Yarn is dyed in batches, and two skeins of the same color from different batches can look slightly different side by side. Come back for one more in a month and you might not find a match. A baby blanket is small, so buying on the higher end only costs you a skein or two, and you can easily use your leftovers for a small project like a matching hat.

Say you’re crocheting a receiving blanket, 36 by 36 inches, in a DK yarn with 220 yards per skein. Our range for that size is 1,100 to 1,950 yards. Take the top figure, divide 1,950 by 220, and you get 8.9. So you’d buy 9 skeins. Use only 1,400 yards because you work loosely, and you’ve got two spare for that hat.

1,950 yards (top of the range) ÷ 220 yards per skein = 8.9
8.9 rounded up = 9 skeins

If you’ve made a few projects before and you know that your knitting or crocheting style is loose (or if you’ve picked an open, lacy stitch), you can safely estimate with the lower end of the yardage ranges.

If Your Size Isn't Listed

Scale from the closest blanket in the table. Find your blanket’s area (width x length), then find the table blanket’s area. Divide yours by theirs to get a scaling number (1.2 in the example below). Multiply both ends of the range by it, since yarn depends on area.

40 × 40 = 1,600 square inches (yours)
36 × 36 = 1,296 square inches (a receiving blanket)
1,600 ÷ 1,296 = about 1.2
1,100 to 1,950 yards × 1.2 = about 1,300 to 2,350 yards

If you’d rather work from a specific figure than a range, make a small test square in your chosen yarn and stitch, weigh it, and work from that. For the full step-by-step method, head to our blanket yardage guide.

Choosing Yarn a Baby Can Snuggle

A baby blanket gets dragged across floors, spat on, and washed again and again. So pick for washability first, softness second, and save your delicate yarns for a keepsake nobody plans to machine wash.

Cotton yarn is a safe starting point. It’s soft, breathable, and can be machine washed, which is why so many baby yarns are cotton or cotton blends. Acrylic yarn is the other everyday pick, since it’s durable and washes easily.

If you want wool, look for superwash on the label. It will be listed alongside the washing symbols that tell you how to care for it. Untreated wool shrinks and mats when it meets heat and agitation, so a machine wash can turn a blanket into a felted mat. Superwash wool has been treated so it won’t do that.

Merino is the softest of the wools and a good choice for baby skin, while alpaca and other natural fibers for blankets are warm and light but usually need hand washing.

Frequently asked questions

Can I hold two thinner yarns together instead of one thicker one?

Yes, and plenty of baby patterns are written for it. Two strands of fingering held together work up similarly to a DK weight. Budget each strand separately, so a blanket needing 900 yards means 900 yards of each strand, not 450 apiece.

My pattern lists yarn in ounces, not yards. What now?

Check your yarn label, which gives both. Divide the pattern’s total ounces by your skein’s ounces to get the number of skeins, then round up. Ounces only compare fairly between yarns of the same thickness, so this works when you’re using the thickness the pattern asked for.

Does it take longer to knit or crochet a baby blanket?

Crochet is usually faster, since each stitch covers more ground than a knit stitch of the same yarn. That’s also why it uses more yarn.