If you ask me my favorite style of blank (clothing, home décor, vacations), I will reply “nautical” almost every time. I love navy-and-white striped shirts, boat shoes, anchors necklaces, diagrams of boats, fabric printed with whales, you name it. Is it nautical? I want. So when it came time to decorate my new East Coast home, duh, I went with nautical. I sewed a bunch of nautical pillows for my living room (7, to be exact), but felt a little limited by the usual fabric + zipper + square pillow form. Enter: the knitted ship’s helm pillow. It’s just on the fun side of goofy, and it’s certainly a talking piece. “Oh, I
see that you have a boat-printed pillow and what? Is that a knitted ship’s wheel?” Indeed.

Construction for the helm pillow goes like this: You begin in the center of the wheel and knit a flat circle. Then you divide the stitches into six sections and work an intarsia wedge over each section. You seam the wedges together, then join all the stitches onto one long circular to knit the outer ring. You purl one turning round, which
becomes the edge of the wheel, then knit the outer edge to the halfway point. Once you’ve made two identical pieces like this, you graft them together to create the whole piece. Then you make 3-D spokes and sew them to the outer edge of the piece, creating the part of the wheel that the pirate uses to steer. Ahoy!

Yarn: Knit Picks Brava Worsted, 100% Acrylic; 219yds/100g: Sienna (MC), 2 skeins, Cream (CC1), 2 skeins, Brindle (CC2), 1 skein, Black (CC3), 1 skein.

Needles: Size 7 (4.5 mm): 24” or longer circular (cir) and double-pointed (dpn). Adjust needle sizes if necessary to obtain the correct gauge.

Notions: 18” round pillow form (available online or at a store like Joann’s) OR a large bag of toy stuffing, waste yarn, tapestry needle, toy stuffing for spokes.