Cakewalk Blanket

Scheepjes is celebrating 10 years of Whirl, and I had the opportunity to design something with their special edition birthday cake whirls.

My Cakewalk Blanket is a continuous design, so you don’t have to cut apart your whirls or deal with lots of ends. It is worked in a series of repeatable motifs, so it’s easy to customize to any size. It is also constructed with a join-as-you-go technique meaning that, when you’re done, you’re truly done. The pattern is also rich with texture, creating a blanket that’s as fun to stitch as it is to snuggle under.

I have designed it for the three special edition birthday cake whirls, but you can use any whirls or any yarn you like. I have some extra layouts and ideas for possible color combinations below, and a pair of mini samples in Scheepjes Stone Washed Flow and Minerals.

Important Links

In celebration of the 10-year anniversary of Scheepjes Whirl this pattern will be available on Ravelry free for the first week (April 29th through May 6th, 2026).

• View the pattern listing on Ravelry
• Buy the pattern on Etsy

Yarn and Materials

This pattern was designed for the three special edition birthday cake whirls. These three whirls share matching inner and outer shades. When combined, all three cakes create one continuous flowing gradient. You could also use any three whirls that you like together or a mega whirl.

Scheepjes Whirl (60% Cotton, 40% Acrylic; 215g/1000m)

• 797 Cutie Pie
• 798 Berry on Top
• 799 Piece of Cake

with a 3mm crochet hook

One of my testers used a medium length gradient yarn on their sample and I liked it so much that I had to try Scheepjes Flow out with pattern. I think that this pattern has enough texture to be interesting in a solid yarn but is simple enough show off a gradient or variegated yarn.

Here are my little samples in Scheepjes Stone Washed Flow color 04 Reverie and one in Stone Washed Minerals 906 Opal Ocean both with a 3.5 mm hook. Each used about 23g per motif.

Size and Layout

Made with three whirls the blanket is fairly small, about 93 x 93 cm (36.5 x 36.5 in). However, you can make the blanket any size that you like. As long as you can draw a continuous line corner to corner through each square of a grid you can make the blanket continuously in that size.

For a bigger blanket with whirls, each whirl will make about 22-24 motifs so here are some possible blanket sizes for 4, 5, and 6 whirls.

• 4 whirls: 88 motifs, 8×11 grid, 93×127 cm
• 5 whirls: 108 motifs, 9×12 grid, 104×138 cm
• 6 whirls: 130 motifs, 10×13 grid, 115×150 cm

Here are some examples of possible layouts with different sets of whirls (I used Scheepjes cotton whirls to estimate the color placements in these examples). The first example shows a very simple up and back pattern, this works in any size as long as the direction of the “stripes” is an odd number. The second example shows a squiggly path through all the squares. The third example shows diagonal paths through the blanket; this would be a little tricker to keep track of as much of the joining will be later on but allows for a lot more mixing of colors.

You can also make this pattern with any yarn you like. My sample with Stonewashed is about 15×15 cm per motif so a 64-motif blanket would be 120×120 cm.

Pattern Support

Jessica Wifall’s Crochet Studio: my facebook group it is a great place to ask questions of me and the community and share your creations and works in progress.

My YouTube Channel: I am slowly working on increasing my list of crochet technique video tutorials. I may not have any up right now that apply specifically to this pattern but at some point, in the future that might change.

• Techniques playlists: Right-handed / Left-handed

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The Design

When Scheepjes first asked if anyone wanted to design something for their Birthday Cake whirls my first reaction was no. I had a plan for next year (2026) and already to many projects in progress. However, my brain didn’t listen to me, and I started thinking about ideas and what could make. My brain is both chaotic and structured so one of the first things I started thinking about was if I did make a design what would be my requirements and I came up with this list.

• No Cutting, the design must be continuous so to take full advantage of the whirls, and I don’t want to deal with ends.
• Repeatable, this had to be a pattern that I could write and have tested in a smaller section to meet the time limitation.
• No joining at the end, I didn’t want extra yarn or extra steps at the end.
• Lots of Texture, since this was going to be limited in color and shape, I wanted to emphasize texture.

With these in mind I was thinking about different ways to make a continuous repeatable pattern one day in the shower (where many of my best ideas come from) and corner to corner designs came to mind. I remember visualizing squares folding and bending around. I realized that if I had a motif that was corner to corner and I joined as I went, as long as I could draw a line though every square in a grid from corner to corner without stopping, it could make a continuous blanket.

At this point it was clear to me that I was designing this, and I gave myself until the end of the year (about 3 weeks to come up with a design for the square). I tried a lot of different things and worked on it a lot in the evenings during a trip to visit family over Christmas. On the couch where I was sitting, one of my Mother-in-Law’s crocheted blankets is always over the back. I quite like this blanket; it has several vertical stripes of textured cluster stitches. I incorporated the cluster stitches into my design in little horizontal stripes to form diamonds in the finished blanket.

It took quite a few tries to refine the shape, but I am very pleased with the final result.

Planning the Layout

Once I had the design but before I received my Whirls, I spent a lot of time planning the layout. I made a grid then drew a bunch of different ways that I could make a continuous path through the blanket. Then I took the pictures I had of the whirls and estimated where the colors would end up depending on the placement.

My planning drawings in procreate, the one in the upper right corner was supposed to be a Scheepjes Ship.

When I was happy with the layout and had the yarn, I started working on the blanket and taking pictures for the pattern as I went. This is where I made a small error. I planned to start with Cutie Pie but photographing the white was not good so I switch to Berry on Top. Then without thinking about it I just went about continuing my very carefully planed layout starting with the wrong color first.

Below is my finished blanket and then the image cut in to individual motifs and rearranged appropriately as it would have been had I made the blanket starting with the correct color or if I had cared on as if I was on motif 21 when I started with Berries on Top.

If you are using the layout given in the pattern please start with Cutie pie, I think it looks much nicer.