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When it comes to thoughtful gift ideas, this new daddy might get anyone beat.
Seung Lee, a Seattle-based dad, recently revealed on Twitter that he made a blanket depicting his baby’s sleep patterns from the day the little one was born until his first birthday.
The sleeping blanket
A visualization of my son’s sleep pattern from birth to his first birthday. Crochet border wraps around a double-knit body. Each row represents a single day. Each point represents 6 minutes of time spent awake or asleep #knit #hook #data visualization pic.twitter.com/xwBh7vIilJ
– Seung Lee (@Lagomorpho) July 12, 2019
Each row of the blanket marks a day, while each dot – the blue indicating the time the little one was asleep and the gray indicating the time spent awake – represents six minutes, making it perhaps the most more data-driven all time.
The cover can be read top to bottom and left to right, like a book. The top row shows the first day of the birth of Seung’s son, with the bottom row representing his first birthday.
Recording whether your little one is awake or asleep every six minutes for an entire year may seem impossible, but Seung had some help. He used Baby Connect, an app that helps parents track information like baby’s sleep patterns, diaper changes, and feeding schedules.
Seung was able to export Baby Connect’s sleep data to a CSV data format, which he then filtered and converted to JSON format to help him visualize the patterns. Then he created a tool that helped him track progress and position point markers for the blanket.
“Seeing it start to fall into place, especially since I was stitching it up, was amazing,” Seung said on Twitter. “Seeing rows of individual colors lining up with the corresponding rows I had knitted weeks / months earlier was extremely satisfying. “
Sleep data was collected with the @babyconnect BabyConnect application that allows you to export in CSV format. The CSVs were filtered and converted to JSON (using Google Apps Script and Python) which could then be used for viewing and tracking pic.twitter.com/IjRpXXnlKE
– Seung Lee (@Lagomorpho) July 12, 2019
So how big is a blanket that illustrates 365 days of sleep? The father shared that it ended up being almost square, measuring 42 inches long and 45 inches wide, and consisted of around 185,000 stitches.
And while this cover shows the baby’s first year of life, Seung (understandably!) Didn’t complete the project until her son’s second birthday was approaching. Seung says it took him about 300 hours over 104 days to assemble the blanket, not including time spent doing prep work or practicing.
“Despite the prep work that took months, it was all worth it as I hardly had any issues or setbacks,” Seung wrote.
Watching it start to come together, especially while I was sewing it, was amazing. Seeing rows of individual colors lined up with corresponding rows that I had knitted weeks / months earlier was extremely satisfying pic.twitter.com/DkY22D9hSj
– Seung Lee (@Lagomorpho) July 13, 2019
While it seems like the project was rewarding for Seung, he says he was happy when the cover was finally finished.
“I’m just really, really relieved to be done. I’m incredibly happy with how it came out and how close it has come to my original vision, ”he said. “I think this is the best craft project I have done to date.”
There is nothing like feeling that someone loves what you have done for them pic.twitter.com/4U1VBCcKNm
– Seung Lee (@Lagomorpho) July 15, 2019
Best of all, the hours spent creating the cover were worth it. Seung shared an adorable photo of her toddler now wrapped in the sweet gift. “There is nothing like feeling that someone loves what you have done for them,” he wrote.
