Knit Summer Tops with a Bit of Lace

This time of year I annually try to convince everyone that you can still knit and wear knit garments in the summer. One way to do that is knitting short sleeved or sleeveless shirts. But you can make it even cooler (and a little less plain) by adding a bit of lace.

Lace literally makes your projects lighter, but it also provides a bit of ventilation that makes your clothes more comfortable to wear. So let’s check out some knit tops with lace for summer knitting.

Live your cottagecore dreams with the Nostalgia Tee from Auguste Knit. This DK weight top is vintage inspired and includes an allover lace pattern on the front and sleeves and most of the back. It’s worked in one piece from the bottom up and is available in five sizes. You can find the pattern on Ravelry.

A more subtle design but with a fun wavy lace pattern is the Cloudbreak Tee from Wool & Pine. This pretty top uses DK weight yarn and has classic t-shirt styling with a lacy twist. It comes in 11 sizes up to a 72 inch/183 cm bust. It has a seamless set in sleeve design that’s a lot of fun and produces a great fit. It can be worked with long or short sleeves and the lace pattern is both written and charted. Learn more on Ravelry.

If you want the lace to be more of an accent than a major design element, check out Ophelia by Star Crossed Knits. This pretty design can be a tank top, short sleeved or long sleeved project, and it features a bit of lace around the neckline, sleeves/armholes and hem. It’s worked from the top down in fingering weight yarn and comes in nine sizes.

Add a little simple lace to the top of your knit shirt to make it lighter with this pattern from Little Theorem. This project is worked seamlessly from the top down and has a slightly drapey neckline and little cap sleeves. It’s available in nine sizes and uses lace weight yarn.

Another option with a bit of lace on the top is Lokta by Joan Forgione, available on Ravelry. The yoke portions are worked back and forth in rows, then joined to work the stockinette stitch section in the round. The pattern calls for a fingering weight yarn plus mohair (or use a light DK), and the lace is both written and charted. The design has eight sizes available.

There’s a lot to like about the Eloise Bandana from Katryn Seeburger. This cute little colorwork triangle can be worked as a bandana or kerchief size or a bigger shawlette.

It’s worked in two colors of fingering weight yarn so you can use whatever yarn you have in your stash and just make it as big as you can (since it is worked from the bottom up).

You can see the two sizes from the photo, and also two colorwork options: strawberries and lily of the valley.

But that’s not all the choices you have. In fact, there are 34 different charts you can choose from to knit onto your project. Some of the options include happy faces, a lobster, a pumpkin, a snail and a butterfly. There are cherries, peaches, tomatoes and radishes.

There’s even a blank square you can use to draw your own little design if you want to use something else. Or keep it blank and make it a plain checkerboard design.

And while both of these shawls use the same icons throughout, you could also use different designs throughout if you want. Say a fall version with a bat, pumpkin, leaf and acorn, or a summer beach theme with sailboat, fish, lobster and a bird? I keep suggesting four different icons because the larger size has four rows of squares, but the smaller has three, so you could do stripes of the same icon or alternate a couple of different ones, whatever you like.

Look through the finished projects on the Ravelry project page to see lots of different options, from rows to individual icons. There are also some projects that are smaller than the suggested size to make a smaller bandana. You could also keep going a make a bigger shawl working increases in the same way as you have been going.

Check out all the details and grab a copy of the pattern on Ravelry.

[Photo: Katryn Seeburger]

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