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Hot Water Bottle Cosy (R2)

Easy Hot Water Bottle Cosy Pattern

This hot water bottle cosy was designed specially for my mum's birthday. She loves hot water bottles but uses pillowcases to wrap them instead of special cosies. As such this design is as pillowcase-like as I could make it. It has no buttons to stab or ribbons to tickle, and has an open neck that you can just drop the bottle into without fiddling around. I even used a slightly fancier yarn than usual! The only shaping is at the very bottom of the pattern, the neck is held closed by the magic of rib stitch.

A printable version of this pattern is available.

You will need:

  • Just under 100g of dk yarn
  • 4 x double ended knitting needles (4mm)
  • tapestry needle
  • scissors

Pattern:

(A list of abbreviations is available.)

See 'Notes' for tension.

Cast on 50 stitches and join into the round.

  1. Rounds 1 & 2: [k4, p1] x 10
  2. Round 3: [k4, pfb] x 10 (60)
  3. Rounds 4 & 5: [k4, p2] x 10
  4. Round 6: [k4, pfb, p1] x 10 (70)
  5. Rounds 7 & 8: [k4, p3] x 10
  6. Round 9: [k4, pfb, p2] x 10 (80)

Now for the textured wave part. The complete design can also be seen in the chart below.

  1. Rounds 10 & 11: k4, p4] x 10
  2. Rounds 12 & 13: [k3, p4, k1] x 10
  3. Round 14: [k3, p4, k1] x 10
  4. Round 15: k1, p4, k3] x 10
  5. Rounds 16 & 17: [p4, k4] x 10
  6. Rounds 18 & 21: [p3, k4, p1] x 10
  7. Rounds 22 & 23: [p4, k4] x 10
  8. Round 24: k1, p4, k3] x 10
  9. Round 25: [k3, p4, k1] x 10
  10. Rounds 26 & 27: [k3, p4, k1] x 10
  11. Rounds 28 & 29: k4, p4] x 10

Repeat rounds 10 to 29 three more times (knit them four times in total).

Continue repeating the final round until there is a rib section around 18cm in height (about fifty more rounds if you prefer to count).

Use a picot bind off to finish. This is worked by repeating the following bullet points until no stitches remain:

  • Cast on 1 st.
  • Cast off 2 sts.
  • If your cast off method leaves a stitch on the RH-needle, transfer it back to the LH-needle.

The textured pattern of the hot water bottle is shown here as a grid. Knit stitches are white, purl stitches are pink. Because the pattern is worked in the round every row is followed from right to left starting at the bottom of the grid.

Chart showing the layout of the knits and purls

Making Up:

Close the opening at the bottom of the hot water bottle by sewing the first half of the cast on stitches to the second half. Lose any remaining loose ends in the fabric of the cosy.

The hot water bottle is dropped into the cosy through the opening at the neck. The long rib section is then doubled over for ease of access.

Notes:

Tension

For a regular size hot water bottle each stripe of rib or purl needs to be about 2cm across. You don't want the cosy to be baggy so a tension patch of stocking stitch should measure about 2cm across for every four stitches cast on.