Knitting

Free Patterns, Tutorials and Project Ideas

Recycling Yarn

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Purchasing quality yarns for your project can become costly. Many knitters have become resourceful in obtaining yarn for their projects by purchasing knitted items from thrift stores, yard or tag sales, or estate sales and reusing the yarn.

How do you decide if a knitted item is worth taking apart for the yarn? The [tag]KnitWit[/tag] site has a whole page devoted to the methodology of finding and reusing previously knit yarn. The most important thing she does is to avoid serged seams. When a seam is serged, the excess fabric is usually blade cut as it is sewn, thus each row of yarn is cut at both sides of the item and the yarn is in very short strands.

[tag]Ashley Martineau[/tag] published a tutorial and shawl pattern in the Spring 2005 [tag]Interweave Knits Magazine[/tag] about reusing yarn. The information is also available at [tag]Neauveau Fiber Arts[/tag].

Another source of how-to information can be found at this page at [tag]ebay[/tag]. This ebay guide writes very good information about purchasing recycled yarns at ebay and what information you need to for in the auction write up.

Bottom line is if you want to try expensive yarns, and have a beer budget, think about recycling yarn. At minimum, the largest expense will be your time.

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Patchwork Blanket Knitting Patterns

Any time of year is a good time for stash busting, but if you can combine it with knitting a blanket that will keep you warm when it (finally!) gets cooler that’s even better. Let’s take a look at some fun patchwork blanket knitting patterns. 

If you want to keep it super simple, you can just make blocks of garter stitch and sew them together, like the beginner’s patchwork baby blanket from Mini Baa Baa or the color block blanket from Make and Do Crew. Both projects are worked in strips and sew together, with the baby version calling for two strands of DK or light worsted weight yarn held together and the larger one using bulky yarn. 

Add a little more texture with the mixed blocks of the cottage quilt throw from Mama in a Stitch. This one combines garter stitch and seed stitch and uses worsted weight yarn. She used a crochet join to make the chains on top of the blocks, but you can join them however you like. It calls for eight colors but you can use what you have, and there are three size options. 

Get a real sampler style patchwork blanket with this design from Knit Sew Make. It calls for worsted weight yarn and has four size options. All of the patterns just use knit and purl stitches so this one is still pretty easy for beginners. 

If you want a more complex colorwork project that will keep you entertained all season, try the Peace by Piece blanket pattern from Needle and Feather. This one is made up of two color colorwork blocks and calls for worsted weight yarn. You can choose to use just a few of the blocks and repeat them more often, or make multiples of the whole set. 

The knitted patchwork recipe from Martine Ellis (free on Ravelry) uses mitered squares in fingering weight yarn, so it’s perfect for using up all your leftover sock yarn and mini skeins. This one is a tutorial more than a pattern so you can make your blanket as big as you like or keep going until you run out of yarn. 

Susan B. Anderson’s 100 Squares blanket (find it on Ravelry) has a lot of mitered squares, too, but they’re arranged in fun ways and includes some quilt inspired designs as well. This one also is a bit of method more than pattern but it sure looks like a lot of fun for using all the leftovers. 

Of course you can totally improvise a patchwork blanket using the yarn and stitches you like, but I hope these patterns inspire you to look at your leftover yarn in a new way.