Snuggly Hoodie Dress Knitting Pattern

I have lately been enjoying knit dresses as a way to keep extra warm when the weather is cold. Toward the end of 2022/beginning of 2023 I made a bulky sweater into a tunic but I don’t think I fully appreciated it at the time.

This winter I am loving it (and recently knit another worsted weight sweater dress; I guess that’s my December knitting project now?) so I’ve had my eye on more warm sweater dresses lately.

I really like this one from Minimi Knit Design. It’s called Forever 16, and is a longer version of a regular length hoodie by the same designer. It uses a combination of shaping methods in the top down design to give it a relaxed fit. The curved hem is shaped with short rows, and the hoodie is picked up and knit after the body of the dress is done.

There’s also an option to make a super cute crocheted drawstring, and the pattern includes written instructions, a chart and a video for the drawstring so you should be able to do it even if you aren’t that comfortable with crochet. You can also do an I-cord drawstring if you want to stick to all knitting.

The pattern includes 10 sizes, ranging in size from a chest measurement of 39.5 to 72.25 inches, or 100.5 to 183 cm. It’s meant to be worn with 7 to 9.5 inches, or 18 to 24 cm, of positive ease, but you can pick the size that gives the ease you like for your body measurements.

This dress uses worsted weight yarn so it will be super cozy. It’s pretty worked in a solid color as shown, but it would be cute to throw in some stripes or even make it a stash busting project with all the yarn leftovers you’ve collected.

You can buy the pattern directly from Minimi Knit Design.

[Photo: Minimi Knit Design]

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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