How to Knit a Clothespin Bag
Clothespin bags are small pouches that can hook onto a clothesline to keep your clothespins handy. While various different types and styles of clothespin bags exist, they can be simple projects, suitable for the beginning knitter. Advanced knitters can customize and embellish as desired. The clothespin bag instructions here are for a simple strip of knitted fabric, using a seed stitch pattern to keep the fabric more stable. This project can be completed within a few hours, even for an inexperienced knitter.
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Instructions
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Buy yarn. Just about any worsted weight or heavier yarn will do. Lighter weight yarns will not stand up to the weight of the clothespins. Cotton worsted weight yarns can be very durable for this type of project and can also minimize stretch.
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Cast on your stitches. To make a bag between 5 and 7 inches wide, cast on between 24 and 36 stitches for a worsted weight yarn. The number of stitches is dependent on your knitting gauge, needle size and the weight of the yarn. Use your best guess for the width since width is not critical for this project.
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Begin knitting. For the seed stitch, you will need to knit one, purl one across the first row. On the second row, you will need to knit the purl stitches and purl the knit stitches. A link to a seed stitch tutorial is included in the References section. Continue knitting in the seed stitch pattern for twice the desired length of your clothespin bag.
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Begin shaping the handle once you have reached twice the length of your bag. Continuing in seed stitch throughout, bind off five stitches at the beginning of one row and five stitches at the beginning of the next row. Next knit a slip slip knit (ssk) decrease at the beginning of a row and knit-two-together (K2tog) at the end of a row. Perform these decreases every other row until your handle is at the desired width, usually no less than an inch wide. Continue until your handle is about an inch longer than the desired length, cast off a few stitches in the center of a row for a button hole, and then cast-on an equal number of stitches in the middle of the following row. Knit for another inch.
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Bind off the remaining stitches on your needles. Using the tapestry needle, weave in all loose ends. Fold over the handle of the bag at the top and determine where the button should be placed. Sew on the button, and you're done.
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References
Resources
- Photo Credit Peety Cooper/Digital Vision/Getty Images
