First Way to Make a Baby Book from Swatches you already have; a recipe pattern

I think it might be a great way to re-use gauge swatches as well.

merryterry commenting on Book for Baby on Ravely Tweet

YES!

I’ve thought of two ways to use ups gauge swatches that you already have in baby books, Here is the first way.

Choose Gauge Swatches and New Cover

Choose Swatches and yarn for the cover with the same (easy) laundry needs
Choose swatches made from safe things to chew on
Have fun arranging your swatches in natural light.

Design your swatch Arrangement

Arrange your chosen swatches in a stack. Think about how the colors flow, some hide behind others, and what effects look cute peeking through lace.
The edges that can be attached are:

live stitches
a signature of double pages with an assembly tab braid in the middle
picot cast on
Picot bind off
picot edging,
a crocheted edging
bound off edges.

Measure how long and wide the cover edge needs to be to cover all of the swatches with about .25 inch, .5 cm extra in both dimensions. Some of your rectangles will be different sizes, some of your swatches will not be rectangles! The book cover will give unity to the project.

Knit the first Cover and Hinge

Cast on enough stitches to be the height of the book cover. Knit the cover long enough to cover all of the swatches in the stack. Use a balanced, non-curling stitch like garter or ribbing. Work about .5 inches, 1 cm in reverse stockinette to be your hinge.

Add the Pages in by Knitting them Off Together with the Book Cover

Hold the first swatch up to the binding and see how many stitches on each side need to be worked before connecting it. The spine of the book will be worked in garter stitch. Hold the page behind the cover stitches, place the live stitches on a needle; or hold the stable loops available, or the flat edge of the bound off or crochet swatch that you can pick up and knit a stitch in.

Knit off the cover stitches with the page stitches across, then work the cover stitches alone. Which brings up the important question of how to make the stitches come out evenly.

How to Make the Swatch Stitches Come Out Evenly

If there are more stitches in the page fabric than in the cover fabric, then knit off 2 or more of the swatch stitches with the spine stitches. If there are fewer stitches in the page fabric than in the cover fabric, then knit a spine stitch alone between knit together stitches. The magic formula can help.

You can alwasy distribute the skips or doubled up stitches evenly as you join them, checking for warped and stretched parts as you go. Ah, the bold life!

Knit to the end, turn.

Knit back, turn.

Connect the next page until all of the pages are added. If you have a particularly thick page, or did use a double signature page, you may need to work a row of garter stitch without connecting more pages to the spine.

Once all of the pages have been added, work a turning hinge in reverse stockinette the same number of rows as were worked on the opposite cover. Work the second cover the same number of rows as the first, bind off in pattern

If you have some very pretty swatches you’d like to display as the covers, you could just Knit on a spine. I’d make it the same length as those cover swatches in that case, not have an overhang.

Finishing

Throw the book in the washing machine, then weave in the ends. (Or the other order if that is how you roll) You could embroider the middles of the page for more excitement. You could knit or crochet some edgings too.

I’d love to hear how cute your books came out, how the family liked the toy, and if your space got more tidy when you were done.

If you took up swatching as a result, I totally want to hear about it!