Christmas Chocolate Orange Cover Knitting Patterns

A Terry’s Chocolate Orange is a classic Christmas gift in the UK that has become more popular in America as well. And if you know knitters, you know they’re going to cover something in knitting if they can, so there are lots of different Christmas themed chocolate orange knitting patterns out there (which you could use for an actual orange as well if that’s in your traditions).

Chocolate orange covers seem to be one of those projects where a designer makes a lot of variations on the theme, so we’ll just touch on a few here but you can further explore the designer’s works if you like what you see.

Wild Welsh Knitting has a cute little set of orange covers that look like little drawstring bags. There’s a snowman, a Christmas tree and a robing, and they are all worked in DK weight yarn. This designer has lots of cute little Christmas projects, not just for oranges.

Wendy Morgan has a bunch of chocolate orange cover knitting patterns, not just for Christmas, but for our purposes I wanted to point out the set that includes a Santa, reindeer and Christmas pudding. It’s available on Ravelry, and the pieces are worked flat using DK weight yarn.

Rebecca Roberts is another designer on Ravelry who does a bunch of Christmas chocolate orange cover knitting patterns, but I wanted to share this post box one because I think it’s really cute and not a design I’ve seen from others. It has a little bird on top and you could change up the colors to make it a TARDIS (yes I know that’s a phone box, not a mail box, but still) if you wanted.

Made by Marianna has a great set of her Christmas orange cover knitting patterns available on Etsy if you want to make a bunch of different designs. This collection includes six patterns: a Christmas pudding, Santa hat, snowman, Christmas trees, elf hat and Santa’s belt. The Christmas tree is shown above. All of the patterns use DK yarn.

Secret Garden England has a bunch of cute holiday patterns, too, but if you’re stitching for someone who doesn’t have a lot of Christmas cheer, you’ll want to make this Grinch one. The details are so cute, and while you’ll need more supplies to add all those things, it’s well worth the effort!

Generally I like knitting patterns where I feel like you can use whatever yarn you have (because my stash is big enough and I want to use it, thanks) and make a successful project. This is one of those times when a special yarn makes the process that much easier.

The Floral Bouquet Shawl from Xandy Peters uses a specific extended color pooling yarn from Feisty Fibers, which allows you to place the bobble flowers with increasing frequency as you knit the project.

It starts with a solid color yarn, then the two color yarn is added in, and you make a bobble whenever you encounter the color pops. This would be hard to replicate with other yarn that doesn’t have the extended color pooling built in.

The background of the shawl is ribbed, making the project reversible.

The shawl uses fingering/sock yarn and comes out to be an asymmetrical triangle that’s 54 inches/137 cm long and 36 inches/ 90 cm deep and 60 inches/150 cm across the top edge.

Xandy says the pattern is for intermediate to advanced knitters. Knowing how to work traditional bobbles would probably help, but there’s a great video tutorial for how to work the floral bobbles so you can practice on other yarn or even incorporate the bobbles into other projects.

The bobbles are five-petaled flowers but they also kind of look like starfish to me, which could be fun on a child’s cardigan or other pattern. They’d also be fun on the leg of a sock or around the brim of a hat for extra whimsy.

The pattern includes photo and video tutorials, and written and charted instructions. It also includes tips on what to look for if you choose to use different yarn for the project, and instructions on how to dye your own yarn to use in the project.

If you want to give it a try, you can find the pattern on Ravelry.

[Photo: Xandy Peters]

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