More Summer Top Knitting Patterns to Finish Out the Season

Whether it feels like summer is never going to end where you live or like it’s never going to come, we’re all wrong, but the season change probably isn’t coming as fast as we might hope.

If you’re clinging to the end of summer or can’t wait for it to get started, now’s a great time to cast on a summer top (I just started a Boho Shell the other day — you can get the pattern by Annie Lupton on Ravelry). Here are a few that have caught my eye this season.

Have a festival or concert on your calendar? You’ll want to stitch up the Summer Bandana top, a free pattern from We Are Knitters. Designed by Erica Gabriella Studio, this is basically just a big triangle with straps, so you can customize it to fit you easily. (Free registration required to download pattern.)

I want to believe that knitting the Arewena short sleeve top from Handmade by Kunbi will make me as happy as she looks in the pictures. It’s worth a shot, right? Who wouldn’t be delighted to wear this pretty top, with an allover lace pattern worked from the top down in DK weight yarn. It comes in nine sizes and you can grab your copy on Etsy.

The Dawning Top by Ainur Berkimbayeva is a great little A-line tank top with eyelets for extra airflow coupled with spokes that emphasize the shape. It’s worked in sport weight yarn and has 12 size options, and you can get it on Ravelry.

Take yourself on a little knitting adventure with the Adventure Tank from Disturbing the Fleece. Originally done as a knitalong, the pattern is now available for purchase. I like that this one has wide straps (almost but not quite cap sleeves) and because it’s worked from the top down you can make it as long as you like. It also has 12 sizes and you’ll find it on Etsy.

The Muse Tee by Amanda Solomon is a simple cropped scoop neck worked from the top down and uses three strands of yarn — a DK and two fingering weight — to make a worsted weight yarn. Hello, stash busting! But it’s worked on size 13 US needles (9 mm) for a open fabric that’s perfect for layering throughout the year. It comes in nine sizes up to a 65 inch chest circumference and you can grab a copy on Ravelry.

The Slightly Sassy V from Aimee Sher is another one that can span seasons because you can work this fingering weight, top down, raglan V-neck with short or long sleeves. It uses a super simple and sleek I-cord edging, and has options for adding bust darts for a more custom fit if needed. You can get this pattern on Ravelry.

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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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