Armed with your crocheting skills, you can make a blanket for your baby and save a significant amount of cash you might have spent on the ready-made baby blankets.
Besides, handmade baby blankest make lovely gift ideas for expecting moms or for friends, family members, colleagues, etc., who already have a baby.
When working on this project, however, you should be careful what type of yarn you choose to ensure it’s safe and feels comfortable to the baby’s sensitive skin.
That being said, we’ve put up this post to help you choose the best yarn for baby blanket which will enable you to create a truly amazing masterpiece for your little one.
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Why Prefer Soft Yarn For Baby Blanket?
The reason why you need a soft and delicate yarn for making baby blankets is that the young ones have VERY sensitive skin.
Their skin is 30% thinner than yours and is still developing. And if it comes into contact with rough yarns, like wool, it’ll become itchy and cause discomforts or irritations to your baby skin.
Not just baby blankets…if you plan to crochet any other item that will be worn by your baby, you should stick to the soft and delicate yarns—like acrylic, bamboo, and cotton.
In addition to the soft feel, the yarn you choose for your baby blanket should also be safe for him or her.
It should not contain any harmful dyes and chemicals. It should not be the type that sheds easily as your baby might end up chewing them. All of these can affect your baby’s health.
Let’s take a look at the 5 best yarns that are safe for making your baby’s blanket…
Our Best Yarn For Baby Blanket Picks:
1. Bernat Baby Blanket Yarn with super bulky gague
Bernat Baby Blanket Yarn is one of the safest yarns you can use to come up with handmade blankets and garments for your baby. The luxuriously soft, chenille style yarn has been tested and certified for safety to ensure it will not harm your baby health in any way.
Made of 100% polyester fiber, this yarn is not only soft but also durable enough to enable you to build long-lasting blankets that you can pass from baby to baby. Because this material is also conveniently suitable for machine wash and drying, you’ll not have problems cleaning and maintaining it.
You can use the highly versatile yarn, not only for making baby blankets but also other baby items, including afghans. The yarn is available in super bulky gauge which means you’ll finish your projects faster. It’s also noting that the yarn has multiple color options and different ball sizes to pick from.
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2. BERNAT Baby Blanket Yarn
Also from Bernat, we have this chenille-style baby blanket yarn that feels soft and gentle on your baby’s sensitive skin. Like its sister above, this yarn is also made from polyester material for super-softness and durability.
One of the key things we like about this yarn is that it has a weight category of 6 (super bulky yarn). As a crocheter, you understand very well that higher gauge yarns enable you to finish your projects in a fry.
It is also available in multiple colors for you to pick from. And the fact that it’s machine washable and dry able makes it easy to clean and maintain. Apart from baby blankets, you can use it to crochet other baby items like booties, hats, etc.
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3. Lion Brand Yarn 920-168 Mint Babysoft Yarn
Lion Brand yarn 920-168 is a special, soft acrylic blend that comes in a generously-sized ball. It’s a medium sport weight yarn that will enable you to make incredibly soft and long listing baby blankets.
The yarn is available in up to 25 colors—including solids, variegated shades, and even prints—so you’ll have multiple choices at hand. The prints in particular feature little specks of different colors.
Since there are some slight differences between the three styles, the sizes also slightly vary. The solids are usually 459 yards while the variegated and print varieties are 367 yards’ balls.
Like the previously discussed yarns, this Lion Brand product is also machine washable, so it’s a good choice if you plan to make a blanket for everyday use or any other lovely item that your baby will be using most of the times.
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4. Red Heart Soft Baby Steps Yarn
Red Heart has a reputation for manufacturing quite affordable baby blanket yarns. But that doesn’t mean that their yarns can’t make a lovely, safe, and long-lasting blanket.
What you’ll get in this particular Red Heart Soft Baby Steps Yarn is a fresh, NO dye lot baby solids with an incredibly soft feel. The soft feel comes from the simple fact that this yarn is made of 100% acrylic fiber. And this enables you to come up with a blanket that doesn’t irritate or cause itchiness to your baby’s soft and delicate skin.
It’s also appreciating that this yarn has NO dye let. This is good news because you can always get yarn of exactly the same color if you run out of thread before finishing your project.
Don’t forget that this yarn is also machine washable and dry able, so you’ll have an easy time cleaning it.
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5. Bernat Baby Blanket Big Ball Yarn
Last, but not the least one, we have another yarn from Bernat. This is a plush chenille yarn that will also feel gentle against the sensitive skin of your baby.
Because it is made of 100% polyester material, this yarn is more resistant to stains compared to other fibers. Add this to the fact that it’s also machine wash and dry friendly, and you’ve got yourself an easy to clean baby, with every mess your baby makes on it.
With a ball weight of 10.05/300 grams, this is a super bulky yarn that enables you to complete your projects even faster. However, we advise you to purchase this yarn in sufficient amounts as it comes with dye lots and the colors might fail to match.
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What To Look For Before Buying?
Material
One of the most important things to consider when buying yarn for making your baby blanket is the type of fiber used to make it.
As we’ve said before, babies have a highly sensitive skin which is still developing. And as such, you’d want to get a yarn that feels soft on their skin. Keep off fibers, like wool, which can cause itchiness and irritations to baby skins.
The softest yarns you can buy include acrylic, bamboo, and cotton.
Color
The color of the yarn you choose to work with is also important. In most cases, your color choice should depend on your baby gender as well as your personal preferences.
As you’ve seen from our top yarns reviews above, different threads come with a variety of colors—ranging from the popular pastel colors to the ombres, bright, bold colors, and variegated varieties.
However, watch out for the dye lots! Dye lots mean that a yarn is dyed in lots, making it quite hard for the manufacturer to make a thread from different lots with the same exact color.
TIP: if you’re buying a yarn with dye lots, then be sure to buy in sufficient amounts to ensure you use the same color all through your project.
Washable
Babies do mess up, for sure! Whether it’s spitting up, drooling, diaper disasters, etc., all this mess will eventually get on the baby items…and the baby blanket isn’t an exception.
That being said, you’d want to ensure the yarn you buy is truly washable to enable you to clean it regularly or when the need arises.
All the yarns we’ve featured on this list are machine and dry able. However, make sure you follow the machine wash directions to prevent shrink and damage possibilities.
Weight category
The weight of yarn you use can also affect the outcome of your projects. We can divide baby blanket yarns into two—lightweight and bulky yarns weights.
Though both weights work pretty well for making baby blankets, you might want to choose the weight depending on the period of the year your baby is born in.
If they’re born in the colder months of the year, for instances, you should consider using the more bulky yarns.
Cost
You don’t have to spend million dollars to find a soft and washable yarn with your preferred color.
Remember that your baby will grow faster and will not use the blanket or any other item you’re making for them forever.
Just find a mid-range yarn that will enable you to come up with a lovely yarn that holds up for the given period—and at a reasonable cost!
AVOID yarns that shed like the plague!
Experienced mom knows that a baby will suck on anything they lay their hands on. And if you use a novelty yarn (one that sheds), the baby might end up coughing the yarn hairball. Chocking is also possible!
Final Verdict
As we’ve mentioned throughout this post, the yarn intended for making baby blankets and other items should be soft to ensure it does not irritate your baby’s sensitive skin.
In this post, we’ve outlined the 5 softest and safest yarns that come in multiple color options to enable you to choose your preferred choice.
Follow our baby blanket yarn buying tips to help you easily discover the best yarn to use for your project.
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