Product Review: Bernat Blanket Stripes Yarn

Do you ever get tired of going into product reviews and seeing nothing but 2-3 word reviews? "This sucks. This yarn is awesome. This is horrible."

What makes the yarn terrible? Amazing? Awesome? Inquiring minds wanna know!

With that in mind, since we're building one Crochet Nation, I'm helping to take some of the guesswork out of products for you and hopefully save you all time, effort, energy and most of all, MONEY!

Let's get the legal stuff out of the way...

I am in no way being reimbursed or compensated for my product review from Bernat yarns or any of its subsidiaries. My opinion is my own, so let's get this party started!

Bernat Blanket Stripes yarn

10.5 ounce skein - cake style, center pull skeins. Price runs from $9.99-$12.99 depending on the area and store. Recommended hook size is L

First, let me say that I have been a major fan of the Bernat Blanket brand family of yarns from the very beginning. It takes me generally 5-6 skeins to make one large, adult-sized afghan and from the first, the results have been well-received by many a grateful family member and friends. I've made so many over the years, I've actually lost count.

At the start, Bernat put out only a select few colors of the Blanket yarn and it seemed at first that this would be yet another one-off run of yarn. Here today, gone with the wind tomorrow. Thankfully, this wasn't the case. Over time more colors emerged and styles like the Blanket Stripes, Color Pool, Brights and Baby yarns. All were the 10.5 ounce skein and I anticipated enjoying the Stripes style yarn as much as I have the other colors from the other select styles.

I have made 2 blankets from the Bernat Stripes family in the variegated blues. The first was a challenge blanket from my niece Hilary who didn't believe that Auntie could make an entire blanket in 2 days. Challenge accepted! I told her that if I could make the blanket in 2 days, she had to let me take pictures of her and put them on social media. She lost and Auntie got her pictures for Facebook. LOL!

I made a second blanket for my cousin James last week specifically for this blog post review. I had gotten the yarn from my local Joanns at a great price, so full steam ahead I went with my standard adult-sized blanket. With the Bernat blanket yarns, I keep my stitches simple since I want the colors and the style (Read squishiness) to shine through. I can make a 101 chain, 100 rows of single crochet and border of single crochets with scalloped edges in 2-3 days.

Ease of use: I generally use a size N or P hook for my blankets and the yarn slides through with ease. The Stripes style is no exception. If you make a mistake and you need to frog out your piece, it's not a problem, the yarn when pulled gently comes right out of the stitch without any damage to your yarn or final product. I've frogged several times with the same yarn just for testing and I could see no appreciable difference at all.

Color choices: I do LOVE the color choices of the Stripes style and I also enjoy using the cake, center-pull skeins much more than the standard large wound skein. For me, the cake style wind is easier to stack and store and takes up much less space which is important when you're making multiple projects and have a large amount of yarn on hand. Because let's face it, chunky yarn tends to take up a lot of space. So for color choice, the Stripes gets 5 stars.

The Nitty and the Gritty side of Stripes: If you've stuck with this review so far, things seem really peaches and cream for Stripes. And I bet you're expecting me to say that I have found myself yet another Bernat yarn to love and cherish. Well, you'd be wrong.

Here's the deal. I place blame for this on quality control at the manufacturer level for this MAJOR issue with this particular style of Blanket series yarns. The way the colors are connected is atrocious!

The colors do not blend from one color to another seamlessly or fade into one another, they are literally tied together in a knot. Yep, you heard me right. Knot after knot after knot (And some were lightly burned together at the knot) all the way through each and every skein. This results in not so nice side-effects like the fact that the blankets have large nubs where the yarns were connected (badly I might add) and no amount of weaving in of ends fixes this issue. Even if you were to cut the yarn where connected and try to weave it through so there's no large knot, you still have to do this numerous times throughout the project and we all know how much crafters hate weaving in ends.

The blanket I made my niece 1 year ago is already falling apart. She's a teenager and she loves her blankets I make and this is the only one so far to have issues with holes where the yarn colors were changed. So with that said, I will not be purchasing any more Bernat Blanket Stripes style yarn in the future. In fact, it would be my recommendation (If anyone out there from Bernat is listening *throat clearing*) that to fix this issue, make the yarn more variegated and have the colors fade from one into the next. This is the only way I would ever even consider purchasing this style ever again.

I do hope this review helps and if you are so inclined, you can watch the full review on my youtube channel at 1crochetnation. Be sure to stop by and comment, like, share and subscribe and let me know what you think!

Have a terrific Thursday,

Tracy