Easy Washcloth Knitting Patterns

There are so many washcloth knitting patterns (and dishcloth knitting patterns, though we’ll get to those separately) out there, and with good reason. These little projects are relatively fast and easy to knit, they’re a great way to learn new stitches, they’re useful and they make a fun handmade addition to a housewarming gift, teacher appreciation or really any time.

You can search this site and find lots of washcloth knitting patterns (including a handful I designed several years ago), but I thought it was time for a roundup. Can you delay spring cleaning because you need to knit a washcloth to clean with? Maybe.

The Spa Day Facecloth by Anne Mancine (free pattern on Ravelry) was meant by its name to be for your body, not your chores, but the textured stitch pattern would be great for washing dishes as well as your face. This one uses DK weight yarn, though you could make it in more standard worsted if you want (know that it will come out bigger than the pattern calls for).

If you’re a new knitter looking to move beyond knit and purl, the Exposed Brick Dishcloth from Perfectly Knotted is a great choice. It’s worked mostly in stockinette stitch with some texture added by strategically swapping purls and knits.

Oh La Lana has a huge collection of washcloth/blanket block knitting patterns, many of which just use knits and purls. I wanted to share this hourglass one because I think it’s really fun and their patterns are written out or they have a chart so you can work whichever way you want (or use the written instructions to help you learn to read the chart).

The fun thing about washcloths is that you can add just about any simple design you want to the center, still using knit and purl stitches. This heart (which could also be an afghan square) from Daisy and Storm is a great example of that.

If you’re looking for a bunch of basic washcloth knitting patterns, check out this collection from Knit On Designs. It includes five basic knit and purl washcloth designs so you can make a set as a gift or for yourself.

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When I was looking around for free knitting patterns to share recently, I came across this fun leopard print wrap from Yarnspirations.

This fun bulky wrap gives you tons of practice with instarsia and makes a bold statement while keeping you warm. It’s rated for intermediate knitters and the design is charted but pretty easy to follow. And it’s only 50 rows and worked in bulky yarn, so it wouldn’t even take that long to knit. (You can grab the free pattern from Yarnspirations.)

So what’s the problem? The yarn that the pattern calls for has been discontinued, and it’s not a yarn that a substitute for immediately springs to mind.

The original yarn was Patons Alpaca Blend, a single ply bulky yarn that was a combination of acrylic, superwash wool, nylon and alpaca.

My first thought was Lion Brand Hue + Me, which is an acrylic and wool blend, with two plies instead of a single. It looks like it has the colors you would need to make this fun shawl.

But as I was thinking about it, I thought this would be a good opportunity to introduce you to YarnSub if you don’t already know about it. This website is a giant database of yarn that can consider the qualities of the yarn you want to substitute and offer potential substitutions.

It’s not only thinking about yarn weight, like I was, but also fiber content, number of plies, gauge and even the difference in yardage between one ball and another. It even looks at the price and can be filtered by your price range or preferences about fiber content (if, say, you’re sensitive or allergic to wool, for example, or don’t want to you acrylic).

When I plugged in Alpaca Blend, it gave me a lot of different options, though many of them were self-striping or multicolored, which wouldn’t work for this project, and I don’t see a way to filter for solid colors only.

Still, it’s a good tool to give you some ideas you might not know about or might have forgotten about, and it tells you how the new yarn is similar to the old one and how it differs, allowing you to make smarter choices when substituting yarns.

[Photo: Yarnspirations]

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