Introduction

The Bloomy Nights hot water bottle cover gives a warm, cozy and creative touch to your winter evenings. The project combines knitting and embroidery. The little flowers allow you to play with colors and positioning, so let your creativity run free!

The cover is worked bottom-up with the magic loop technique and an invisible cast on. Before making decreases for the neck of the bottle, the flowers are added through embroidery.

Note: The pattern contains the embroidery instructions (including links to video tutorials) for the little flowers as shown on the beige hot water bottle. It contains an appendix to inspire you into creating different flower configurations, but these are not explained in detail.

Sizes

The pattern works for all rectangular or square-shaped hot water bottles with a minimum width of 16cm/6.3in.

As hot water bottles come in different sizes, this pattern offers a formula to calculate the right number of cast on stitches.

These are the measurements of the sample hot water bottles:

• The beige (big) one: width of 19.5cm / 7.68in, heighth of 25cm / 9.84in (neck not included)
• The yellow (small) one: width of 16.5cm / 6.5in, heighth of 16.5cm / 6.5in (neck not included)

The cover should have a tight fit (some negative ease) to allow an optimal radiance of warmth, but not too tight, so the flowers don’t get too much stretch.

Yarn

Fingering weight yarn

The samples are made with Titus by Baa Ram Ewe (100% wool: a blend of Wensleydale and Bluefaced Leicester with a touch of alpaca), 320 meters / 352 yards per 100 grams / 3.53 ounces.

• Big sample cover: 28g / 1oz in the colorway “Yorkstone”,
• Small sample cover: 24g / 0.85oz in the colorway “Brass band”

Gauge

21 stitches x 35 rounds per 10 x 10cm / 4 x 4in in stockinette stitch on 3mm needles (or needle size to obtain gauge with) after wet blocking.

Needles and tools

• 3mm circular needles: 80cm/32in or longer for the magic loop method
• An extra 3mm needle (length doesn’t matter) for the 3 needle bind off
• Removable stitch markers
• A tapestry needle for weaving in the ends
• A darning needle

The tools mentioned next are only necessary for fine embroidery like the little flowers in embroidery thread:

• Embroidery thread in your prefered colors for the flowers
• A small embroidery hoop with a circumference of 9.2cm / 3.6in, a hoop which is a bit bigger of smaller will do as well
• A wash away, adhesive embroidery stabilizer: this is a sheet that sticks onto your knit, which supports the fabric during embroidering