Have you seen our new book 52 Weeks of Dishcloths: A Knit Picks Kitchen Spectacular? It’s also available in an ebook, and contains our ever-popular dishcloth patterns from each week of 2014. In our blog series, “Dishcloth Remix”, we’re featuring new ways to use these dishcloths, to make fun and functional items you’ll treasure. In our last “Dishcloth Remix”, Hannah’s Chance of Rain dishcloth became an adorable Cloud Case pencil or needle case. This week, Kim’s Lacey Spa Cloth becomes a bread cloth, for housing your warm loaf or other baked goods, and the pattern is so simple!
If you’re an aspiring baker, and a foody gift-giver like me (I made a batch of cookies – don’t let me eat them), this bread cloth could add a bit of pizzazz to your presents. It’s perfect for wrapping around a homemade or store-bought loaf of bread, or for dressing up a simple tin of cookies. It even makes a great reuseable gift wrap! To make it, we knit up 4 of Kim’s Lacy Spa Cloths in Dishie (colorway Silver) and sewed them together. You’ll need 2 balls of Dishie to make 4 dishcloths. We used the recommended 4mm needles.
Then we made an edging by completing the following rows:
Row 1: Pick up stitches on all 4 sides.
Row 2: Knit all stitches
Row 3:(Eyelet row. Makes holes to put the cord through) *yo, k4, k2tog** Repeat from * to **. If your number of stitches don’t jive with this, just skip the last yarn over when you come to the end of the round, and knit to the end.
Row 4: Knit
Row 5: Knit
Row 6: Bind off, loosely.
Finally, we made an i-cord (over 5 stitches). We continued the i-cord until it reached 8 inches longer than the perimeter of the bread cloth. This turned out a bit long, so I’d recommend you just measure your bread cloth’s perimeter and do it for just that length, as you’ll have a lot of cord once the bread cloth is cinched.
I know these directions might seem a bit too “pithy” (as Elizabeth Zimmerman might say) but let me assure you that this is a forgiving project that yields a really lovely result. Join a few more dishcloths together and you could make a lovely bag for housing your craft projects, or bringing your veggies home from the farmer’s market! The possibilities seem endless.
For more dishcloth remix projects, check out:
