For just about forever I’ve been fascinated by the idea of translating quilt blocks into knitting patterns. My knit sampler blanket has several quilt squares, but the patterns are made of textured stitches, rather than colors. Knitting in color poses different technical challenges, so I decided to design this one using stranded colorwork, like Fair Isle, which produces stripes rather than large colorblocks.

There are photos of one hat, knit with different colored yarns which produced bright and distinct bands of color. And another with a single variegated yarn, that gradually shifted between colors. I liked both, and I think this pattern offers some fun possibilities to play around with colors and patterns.

This hat is knit from the top-down, using a circular cast on. I’ve included a link for a circular cast on in the pattern. It gives much cleaner lines to the starburst at the top of the hat, so it’s definitely worth the trouble of learning how to do it.