Making the 2-Needle Preemie Hat Larger by Using Thicker Yarn

Christiane wrote:

Thank you for the new hat. Mommies will love having their babies snuggle and warm. And the pattern can be used for regular hat for other babies too.

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.

First things first: What size do you want to make?

Babies come in all sizes. Are you knitting the hat for a specific baby? If so, get the head circumference and length (height of hat) measurements for the baby himself/herself (plus possibly allowing a bit extra since babies grow so fast).

If you don’t have the exact measurements of the baby, check Measurements Guides such as found at The Preemie Project site. Fortunately, the Seemingly Seamless 2-Needle Preemie Hat has a lot of built-in elasticity, so measurement guideline charts like this can get you close enough to a target size.

Adjusting the hat length is easy to do by just knitting to the length needed, allowing a bit for the crown shaping.

There’s a little bit more to adjusting the circumference. You can consider taking either the “change yarn” and/or “change number of pattern stitch repeats” approach.

Re-sizing with the “Change Yarn” approach

If your target size is not too much larger, you might be able to simply use a thicker yarn on larger size needles.

Ashleigh asked:

Aww!! So cute. I’ll be making a larger size as well–using DK yarn. I wonder what size needles I should use. Any suggestions?

To retain the nice elasticity in the preemie hat, choose a needle size that maximizes the elasticity of the ribbing in your yarn. For thicker yarns like DK, I would start swatching with a needle 1 or 2 sizes smaller than suggested on ball band.

As discussed in Pointers and Tips about Elasticity:

• Too large of a needle can make the ribbed fabric too loose and limp. Therefore, it will stretch out, but won’t rebound.
• Too small of a needle can make the the ribbed fabric too stiff and “boardy”. The fabric will just flatten out in an already expanded state with the elasticity destroyed.

Make a swatch in the pattern stitch and see if you are getting the fabric you want. If not, adjust your needles to either a size smaller or a size larger and re-swatch.

Next, check the gauge you are getting with your swatch by taking the “at rest” measurement and the “fully stretched” measurement. Take the average (sum the two stitch gauges and divide by two) to get your resulting gauge that simulates a pleasingly,comfortable fit.

Calculate the re-sized hat with the gauge you are getting as follows: Let’s say you are getting 5 stitches per inch. For the 60-stitch hat as given, the result would be a 60 divided by 5 = 12″ (newborn baby size approximately 6 – 8 pounds).

If that is not large enough, or is too large because you still want to make a preemie-sized  hat, you can change the number of stitches.