When I started making Sophie’s Universe almost ten months ago, I don’t think I knew what I had gotten myself into. Two weeks into the project, I had already completed Sophie’s Garden, posted a few pictures, and wrote a little about how I’d made my color choices up to that point. The more I’ve worked on Sophie, and the more I posted about my progress on Reddit, Instagram, and Facebook, the happier I was that I spent so much time up front on my color choices. This blanket has been quite the project, and I’ve definitely gone through the cycles of working on it for several hours at a time for weeks in a row to not touching it for weeks. Now that it’s complete, I’m so thrilled with how it’s turned out, but a little sad to not have it to work on anymore.

Once I had a plan in mind for my colors, I headed to Hobby Lobby during a sale to pick up 36 skeins of my favorite softest cotton yarn. I spent way too long in the aisles making my color choices, and only reluctantly made up my mind as the store was closing. Below I’ve included both my exact color choices and which rounds I made in each color, and how I went about making those decisions.

After I decided to make Sophie’s Universe, I spent a lot of time on Pinterest, pouring over photos of color options. I even ended up making a dedicated board for all of the beautiful pictures I found. In my searching, I discovered that my favorite color combinations included several shades of one or two main colors with an accent color. From this, I decided on using ten colors, two of which I bought twice as much of. Half of my shades fell in the blue/green category, and half in the purple/pink category, with one accent yellow. I’ve been partial to yellow since I was a little girl, so while I didn’t want a largely yellow blanket, I thought it complemented the blues, greens, purples, and pinks well. I also chose one color from each category that I wanted as more main colors, the Deep Turquoise and Mulberry. So, in the blue/green category, I have: Deep Turquoise, Aqua, Aspyn, Royalty, and Bright Green. In the purple/pink category, I have: Mulberry, Purple, Rosey II, and Rose Bud. Curry as the yellow accent brings the color list to ten.

Along with the pattern instructions for Sophie, Dedri included spreadsheets for making decisions regarding color changes. I didn’t know how my changes in color choices would fit with the color patterns she had originally chosen, so I was thrilled to find her simple spreadsheets for making these changes myself. I downloaded the Large sized Sophie template, and altered it as I went along. At the end of each part, I would look at the photos of the upcoming part and decide which color I wanted for each round. As I changed colors for each round, I was able to use Dedri’s yarn estimates to make sure I didn’t run out of any of my colors. I saved all of my changes in her spreadsheet template, which you can view here:

Colorful Christine – Sophie’s Universe Colours per Round – Excel
Colorful Christine – Sophie’s Universe Colours per Round – PDF

For the yarn, I used Hobby Lobby’s I love this Cotton yarn in the following colors and quantities:
Deep Turquoise #101 – 6 skeins
Aqua #68 – 3 skeins
Aspyn #318 – 3 skeins
Royalty #90 – 3 skeins
Bright Green #54 – 3 skeins
Mulberry #262 – 6 skeins
Purple #252 – 3 skeins
Rosey II #99 – 3 skeins
Rose Bud #330 – 3 skeins
Curry #326 – 3 skeins

Other than where to make the color changes, I followed Dedri’s pattern as written for the Large sized Sophie. I used a 5mm (US H) hook for parts 1-3, and then switched to a 5.5mm (US I) hook for parts 4 and following [Amazon Affiliate Link], as she recommended in her pattern. I also blocked Sophie at the end of parts 7 and 18. Overall, this pattern has been a joy to follow, and I aspire to create patterns as beautifully as this. Both the completed blanket and the detail that went into the pattern descriptions and photos are incredibly well planned. Working on Sophie has been such an inspiration to me, and while it may have been daunting at the beginning, it has been well worth the work.

I took so many photos of Sophie along the way, all of which can be found on my Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest profiles. Below are a few of my favorites. It was so much fun watching Sophie grow!