Knit Projects Covered with Butterflies

Butterflies are a common source of inspiration for all sorts of artists, and their colors and shapes are a lot of fun for knitters, too. Check out these knitting patterns that include butterfly motifs.

If you want to start simple, try this knit and purl butterfly washcloth pattern from Daisy and Storm. This project uses DK weight yarn and can be used as a washcloth if knit in cotton, or use other fibers and knit a bunch to make a blanket. Both written and charted patterns are included.

You can also make butterflies with eyelets as on this blanket knitting pattern from Knit Hit Shop. The pattern notes say “medium or somewhat heavier yarn,” but given that the pattern also calls for a US4/3.5 mm knitting needle I feel like you might want sport weight or DK yarn instead. It’s meant to be a throw blanket size, so hitting the exact measurements probably isn’t vital.

I also like the mosaic knit Butterfly Flight pattern, which can be used a coaster or potholder, depending on what weight of yarn you use. The pattern is by Arella Seaton and calls for worsted weight to make a washcloth or fingering or sport weight to make a colorful set of coasters. You can find the pattern on Ravelry.

If monarchs are your favorite, you can try the Monarchs of the Central Coast beanie pattern from Nancy Bates (Ravelry), which calls for worsted weight yarn and fits an average adult.

Swallowtail fans can stitch up the Swallowtail sweater from Jamie Hoffman, which calls for fingering weight yarn and is a top down circular yoke pattern with stranded colorwork as well as stripes. The pattern comes in 10 sizes with a chest measurement from 28 to 64 inches (71 to 162.5 cm) and you can find it on Ravelry.

How about some butterfly socks? Coriander’s Butterfly Sock (Ravelry) features butterflies around the leg and on the heel flap. These short socks are worked from the top down and there are eight sizes available in this free pattern download.

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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