*Edit: Border patterns available here, along with a link to charts for the element symbols!
This project took place from February 2011 to November 2011. It was my first big knitting project, and I learned a lot from it. I’m not huge on posting patterns, simply because I draw them on graph paper and transferring that to a digital form may not be the easiest thing for me. Plus, this design has been done by so many people already, it’s super easy to find the element patterns elsewhere on the internet. So for now, I’ll just describe my method and what I learned from the project.
The finished product is 62″ x 49″. It’s double knit in 13 individual pieces, all mattress stitched together.
Distortion
I vividly remember finishing the first panel, looking at it, and being very disappointed. It was supposed to be a square, and it came out like this:
As evidenced by the dimensions of the finished product (and knowing that my initial pattern was a square), knit stitches are significantly wider than they are tall! Luckily for me, the eye is very forgiving and doesn’t necessarily notice this at first glance, but it’s something I now try to keep in mind. So definitely take into account whether or not you can live with a distorted final image from the beginning.
The Mattress Stitch
I remember searching the internet, trying to find some way to attach these pieces when I came across the mattress stitch. I saw pictures of how it looked in the end and couldn’t believe there was a way to connect knitting and make it look that good. But it’s real! The only thing you can tell about it is that it leaves a slight bump in the knitting along the line where it’s made. And you kind of have to make something up like it when you’re attaching things vertically. But overall, it’s by far my favorite way to attach knitting. For reference, here are outlines of the 13 individual pieces that went into the final blanket, in the order I knit them:
If you’re surprised that those are the divisions, that’s the magic of the mattress stitch!
Double Knitting
What I really like about double knitting is it gives the final product a very clean, finished appearance from every angle, and it has even tension throughout. What I mean by that is that if you tug on it in any direction, it feels the same as a normal, one-color, stockinette piece would (as opposed to, say, fair isle, in which the piece always feels tight and unnatural. For me, anyway). Plus, the back is just as fun to look at:
As for the downsides, it will feel like it’s taking twice as long to knit because you are knitting twice as many stitches. And, most importantly, you can only knit with two colors at a time (as far as I’m aware). So if you want to work with more, you’d better use a different style. Or make up some cool new way to use double knitting (and let me know).
Borders
Sometime around the end of the summer, I was just done with this project. It was taking too long, I didn’t want to work on it anymore, all the fun element squares were done, and I just had the boring border to work on. That was no fun, so I jazzed up the border! I gave myself something to look forward to by putting words on the border, rather than just solid color. And as it it worked out, the border is now my favorite part of this entire project. So keep thinking outside the box! Don’t feel like you’re trapped into a pattern just because you started it. The beauty of a project like this, which is done in pieces, is that it can be changed all the way up until it’s stitched together.
Well, that’s what I’ve got for this project. Thoughts? Questions? Leave them below!
“Life happens wherever you are, whether you make it or not” -Iroh
createmarvelous 
That is one of the most epic blankets I’ve ever seen. X
This blanket is absolutely incredible! Is there anyway to get your pattern for the border or a rough idea of how you constructed it? I definitely want to try and make this myself! It’s so beautiful.
Somehow this comment got lost so I realize this may be too late to be helpful, but let me answer anyway! I remember what I essentially did was figure out the dimensions in terms of stitches of each border piece, keeping in mind that every time I stitched two pieces together, I would lose the inner stitch on both pieces due to the way the mattress stitch works. Then I graphed out each letter I would be using (I can probably upload some semblance of the letter font I used around the borders). The length of each sentence around the edges varies, so I changed up how much space would be in between each letter and word depending on the number of letters in the sentence, but I kept the letters themselves the same.
The middle part with the Avatar logo was probably the strangest, since it was actually three separate border pieces that I stitched together and had to make sure lined up correctly. What I actually did was pretty ridiculous but also the only way I could be sure that it worked; when I made the middle border piece (i.e. the long vertical one in the center that had to line up with the outer two), it was one of the last pieces I made, so I stitched it into the blanket while I was working on it to see that the black parts of the letters lined up and adjust if necessary (which it always was)
Anyway, I hope that’s somewhat helpful even though it’s like four months late, and I’ll see what I can do for putting up border patterns! (in a much more timely fashion than this response)
How do I get the instructions to make the star wars blanket?
I don’t have step-by-step instructions, but I described what I did in the original blog post and patterns post (go to the Patterns page if you haven’t found that). The general method is the same as described here on the Avatar blanket, just without the border pieces.