Quick Knits: Bottle Cozy Patterns

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about quick knitting projects that you can add to a purchased gift for the holidays. And one of the easiest of those is buying a great bottle of wine (or, heck, olive oil) and presenting it in a knit gift bag/bottle cozy.

Did you know, specific to knitters, you can join our Knitting Patterns Only group to get knitting patterns, ask questions and gain inspiration for what to knit next. Or how about our VIP Knitting Group with Free knitting pattern access including vintage and Etsy designer patterns for less than $1 a month.

There are a ton of fun patterns for these sorts of projects (for starters check out my simple wine bottle cozy in self-striping yarn and the Chic cozy in a yarn with pompoms as part of the fiber). You can probably find a suitable project for yarn you already have in your stash, so there’s no excuse not to whip one of these up for a Christmas present or a hostess gift.

Here are a few more patterns for you to check out:

Red Heart has the Wrap Your Bottle Cozy, worked mostly in stockinette stitch in the round for a super-quick project; and the Striped Bottle Cozy, which is the same pattern but worked in stripes for stash busting.

Tara’s Knits has a fun Swirled Wine Bottle Cozy, which uses a shifting rib pattern for interesting texture. I particularly like this one because I have some of that exact yarn, even the same colorway, and it only takes a skein.

Samantha Rogers has a basic Felted Wine Cozy as a free Ravelry download. Hers is worked with two colors, but you could always stripe or do a solid one depending on the wool you have available. The Harry Wine Bottle Tote is another Raverly download and another felted project, this time with handles to make carrying even easier.

The Knit Wine Bottle Sweater from JustBCrafty is super cute because it looks like a little sweater, complete with cables and sewn on buttons (which are nonfunctional and you could skip if you’re in a hurry).

The Scroll Wine Cozy by Joanna Roye shows that an easy stitch pattern makes a cozy look that much fancier.

Speaking of fancy, the cozy patterns from DROPS are like little Scandinavian sweaters and truly are a gift themselves.

And since it’s Christmas, who can resist Hilary Carr’s Santa Bottle Cozy, complete with a wee hat?

Not too long ago I did a test knit for another designer that was for a cabled cardigan. It’s really cozy and nice but it just about broke me in a ton of different ways. I couldn’t get gauge, which I suppose is my own problem, but mainly I was somehow both bored and forced to pay attention at the same time.

Because it used the same cable all over, I always had to know what row I was on, but nine out of ten of those rows, nothing in particular was going on. So I couldn’t stop paying attention, but what I needed to attend to was boring.

It may have ruined me for knitting cabled sweaters, but maybe I just need something that’s more engaging. Like this Modern Aran Cardigan pattern from Lion Brand Yarn.

This is a reworking of an old pattern from their archives, and you can tell that form the classic look of the cables and the oversized feel (nothing cropped about this one!). It has allover cables, but like a classic Aran sweater it’s not the same cable, so you’ll have to pay attention to what row you’re on and what cable turns happen for which cables on that row.

Because of this, it’s considered an intermediate knitting pattern, but if you’re comfortable working from multiple charts at once it shouldn’t be a problem for you. There are three different charts and seven different cable moves.

Also because the pattern is so big and boxy there are only two sizes available, with a finished chest measurement of either 49 or 63 inches (that’s 124.5 or 160 cm). It’s up to you to decide how much ease you would like and whether that will work for your body.

The pattern uses worsted weight yarn (and calls for another classic, Lion Brand Fisherman’s Wool). It calls for six buttons and includes pockets to make it extra cozy.

This one looks like a great winter project to make and to wear if you’re up for a bit of a challenge. You can grab the free pattern or buy a kit with the yarn needed direct from Lion Brand Yarn.

[Photo: Lion Brand Yarn]

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