Changing the Number of Stitches for 2-Needle Preemie Hat

Velia wrote:

Right, but it also said you could increase the size by using heavier yarn and a larger needle size. I just increased the number of pattern repeats and made it taller. Love the pattern! Thanks again!

Seemingly Seamless 2-Needle Preemie Hat is sized for premature babies, but you can quite easily upsize it for full term newborns and older babies using either a “change yarn” or a “change number of pattern stitch repeats” approach. Some people might even want to use a thicker yarn to make the preemie size. That is quite easy to do, also, using the same type considerations as for upsizing the hat.

I covered Changing Yarn and Needles in Making the 2-Needle Preemie Hat Larger by Using Thicker Yarn. That doesn’t involve any recalculation for number of stitches for the hat, assuming changing the yarn and needles gives you the (larger) size you want.

But what if you want to do the hat in a fingering weight yarn as originally planned
rather than going heavier to get a larger hat? Then you will need to add stitches.

Example for adding pattern stitch repeat(s)

Using the Seemingly Seamless 2-Needle Preemie Hat as our example, the pattern for the Brim and Main Body of Hat has a 10-stitch multiple.

Based on 7.5 stitches per inch in fingering weight as planned, for each repeat of the 10-stitch multiple, you will add 10 stitches divided by 7.5 stitches per inch = 1.3″ to the size of the average pleasingly, comfortable fit.

Remember that since we are dealing with ribbing, this gauge measurement is the average between the “at rest” and “fully stretched” that simulates a pleasingly, comfortable fit. So you can take that into consideration when you are determining how many repeats you need to add to get your target size. If it is a choice of going a bit smaller or a bit larger, I tend to go with a bit larger since babies grow so fast!

Example for subtracting pattern stitch repeat(s)

On the other hand, what if you want to use thicker yarn and still get a preemie hat size? This scenario gets a bit more complicated, because changing the yarn and needles gives a different gauge, yet we do not want to change the size of the preemie hat itself.

Using the DK yarn example discussed in the making-the-2-needle-preemie-hat-larger-by-using-thicker-yarn article, we had 5 stitches per inch. Therefore each repeat of the 10-stitch multiple corresponds to 10 stitches divided by 5 stitches per inch = 2″.

Tip: A hat is 3-dimensional, and you need to remember that there will be less room inside the hat with the thicker DK yarn than there would be with the thinner fingering weight yarn.

You could theoretically subtract 2 pattern repeats and work the hat on 40 stitches if you didn’t mind the hat on the smaller side. But taking into consideration the added thickness of the yarn as well, I would suggest only subtracting 1 pattern repeat and work the hat on 50 stitches.