The Naptime Baby Blanket by Ammi Lahtinen is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2025 A' Design Award in Textile, Fabric, Textures, Patterns and Cloth Design Competition Category.
IronTextile· 2025
The Naptime Baby Blanket
Client: Barker Textiles
A' Design Award Winner in Textile Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #161597The Design
About The Naptime Baby Blanket
The Naptime Blanket presents a contemporary take on a traditional concept, drawing inspiration from Finnish forest animals and the traditions of the Finnish maternity package. This jacquard-woven cotton blanket is designed with both function and aesthetics in mind, serving as a versatile textile suited for everyday use. While created to provide warmth and comfort for infants, its carefully considered theme, color palette, and style make it suitable for different stages of childhood.
The Recognition
About the A' Design Award
The Naptime Baby Blanket is an Iron A' Design Award winner, a prestigious recognition granted to good designs that meet the professional and industrial requirements expected from well-designed creations. Iron winners demonstrate great skill, high specialization, expert understanding, and creative capacity of their creators. The Naptime Baby Blanket is expected to be a highly regarded, admired, and cherished creation that is practical and innovative. This Iron A' Design Award-winning design integrates industry best practices and has competent technical characteristics linked with know-how and talent. The Naptime Baby Blanket is respected for its thoroughness and is designed to provide quality of life improvements that help make the world a better place.
Where to Get It
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Grand Interview
Your innovative approach to incorporating Finnish forest animals in The Naptime Baby Blanket has earned recognition at the A' Design Award - could you share the creative journey behind selecting and arranging these sleeping creatures to create a direction-independent pattern?
When I received the brief from Barker Textiles, I immediately knew what kind of blanket I wanted to design. An idea of a group of animals had been in my mind already for some time, and this project was the perfect opportunity to bring it to life. I first drew the creatures as individual characters and then rotated and arranged them to fit the blanket’s dimensions in a balanced way. During the process, I also checked the pattern on screen from different directions, to make sure it would look harmonious no matter how the blanket is placed.
The Naptime Baby Blanket beautifully bridges traditional Finnish maternity package elements with contemporary design - how did you balance honoring cultural heritage while creating something fresh and modern for today's families?
My goal was to design a product that feels timeless. For me, timelessness or classic design does not only mean solid colors or stripes, I believe it can also be achieved through patterns. With The Naptime Baby Blanket, I aimed to create something that is both simple and calm in atmosphere, yet still offers little details for a child to discover. Trendiness is not something I pursue in the same way as in fashion, where trends come and go in cycles. Of course, every era has its own characteristics and influences, and on a larger scale no designer can avoid them entirely.
The jacquard weaving technique used in The Naptime Baby Blanket requires precise technical considerations - could you elaborate on how you adapted your artistic vision to meet the production constraints while maintaining the design's integrity?
The pattern was drawn directly with the jacquard weaving technique and the specific product in mind, so the technical aspects did not feel like restrictions but rather guiding principles!
Behind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- Unique Properties
- The blanket represents a modern, timeless design in the long tradition of the Finnish maternity package. It is made for everyday use, combining visual appeal and functionality.
Although designed for infants, the intention was to ensure longevity beyond the baby phase with the theme, style, and colors to withstand the test of time, offering enduring comfort and charm for years to come. Besides as a blanket, it can be used as a play mat, decoration on a bed, or even modified into a wall hanging. - Dimensions & Packaging
- The blanket is 70 x 100 cm and jaquard woven of 100% cotton.
- Tags
- animal pattern, pattern design, baby blanket, jacquard, woven design
- Production Technology
- The Naptime Blanket is a jacquard woven and made of 100% cotton. It is produced by Barker Textiles in Lithuania(EU). Barker Textiles is a high-quality home-textile manufacturer with decades of experience in the industry.
The product was a part of the Maternity Box 2022 provided by The Social Insurance Institution of Finland, known as KELA. They hold a high standard for the quality and endurance of the selected products and the item has been tested to be high-quality, easy to care and safe to use. - Design Challenge
- The design challenge was to create a jacquard woven pattern suitable for a unisex baby blanket, considering the technical constraints such as line thickness and reversibility in the production process.
I also wanted to take into account that unlike garments that babies quickly outgrow, this blanket's timeless theme, style, and colors were chosen to withstand the test of time, offering enduring comfort and charm for years to come. The Naptime Blanket can be one of the items you cherish forever. - Research
- The creative research phase of product design was carried out by first sketching by hand, followed by digital drawing in Adobe Photoshop. The final production file was refined in Adobe Illustrator.
- Inspiration
- Patternsfrom Agency provided the production specs for the blanket, sparking an instant inspiration within me. Knowing the size and production technique, I began sketching elements. My vision was clear: A pattern featuring beloved animals from the Finnish forest depicted cozily napping together. With careful consideration, I created a composition that can viewed from any direction. The initial sketches included the sleeping bear, fox, and squirrel, followed by the adorable addition of a bunny.
- Project Duration
- This charming design project began in Helsinki in December 2020 with the initial sketches of the napping forest animals, culminating one year later, in December 2021, with the unveiling of the final product featured in the 2022 Finnish KELA's maternity box.
- Operation Flow
- The product is a blanket, but besides for enjoying a good nap or cuddling up underneath to read a book, it can be used as a play mat, decoration on a bed, or even modified into a wall hanging. The Naptime Blanket can be a part of kids' childhood core memories of everyday life from peekaboo to building a blanket fort!
- Patents
- The design copyrights belong to Ammi Lahtinen.
- Image Credits
- #1 Photographer Maria Hovilainen, The Naptime Blanket, 2022
#2 Photographer Ammi Lahtinen, The Naptime Blanket, 2022
#3 Photographer Ammi Lahtinen, The Naptime Blanket, 2022
#4 Photographer Maria Hovilainen, The Naptime Blanket, 2022
#5 Photographer Ammi Lahtinen, The Naptime Blanket, 2022
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