Ever since I made striped socks from leftover yarns, I’ve been thinking about other ways to use up the odds and ends in my yarn stash. Here are some fabulous projects I found poking around online. They are mostly knitted although the ideas could easily be adapted for crochet fans.
The project that reminded me the most of my own was Wool and Chocolate’s pair of striped “longies” for her toddler. I love the rainbow of colors she used for these cute pants. They came out a little large, but not to worry. The kid is sure to grow.
Blankets broken into smaller blocks are an obvious choice for using up scraps. The traditional granny square block can be made into afghans of any size, and they look great when they are made with lots of different colors of yarn. (Confession: I love granny square afghans.) But you don’t have to crochet your blankets. Completely Cauchy’s knit blanket is made one small square at a time.
Jesse Breytenbach of Jezze Prints also makes one block at a time, knitting two yarns together with half linen stitch to get a beautiful mix of color and pattern.
If you don’t like the random look that can result from using up scraps, check out Dorien’s tutorial at Just Do. She shows how to sort the yarns and mix them in the knitting to get a graded look that is elegant and artsy.
Don’t have enough yarn for a big project? Then go small. You can knit an army of tiny bunnies using Mochimochi Land’s free pattern or fill your forest with colorful crocheted owls by following Bunny Mummy’s step-by-step instructions.
What’s your favorite way to use up your yarn scraps?
I really love granny squares, too – it’s just the sewing together of all of the squares that puts me off. I have so much stash scraps though, I’ve got to do something…
I’m curious about the blanket made from small knit squares. I think you knit each square right on the blanket as you go which gets around lots of sewing.
My problem is I have so many different weights of scraps! Not sure how to put them all together. I make flower appliques and baby hats and what not but I still seem to have tiny balls floating around
I have this problem, too. Sometimes, I mix yarns that are only sort of the same weight in a single project (like making a toy — example: Alan Dart princess mouse) and I can still get a decent result.
I can think of two different things you might try. One is “improv” or abstract/texture work that uses both knitting and crochet. There’s a great discussion of how to do this in Wool’n’Magic by Jan Messent (see p. 47 on). The idea is to use as many different sizes of yarns as possible, so the mixture we have from leftovers is perfect for this. Another idea to consider is to combine light yarns (by using multiple strands) to get the weight to match the heavier yarns.
Also, a striped scarf made of yarns of various weights could be really cool. Just go with the biggest needle and plan on having some airy sections where the yarn is thinnner.
I might combine to make a striped scarf! 🙂 That sounds fun. I still don’t have the hang of knitting. Something about being too uncoordinated for two needles 😉
It should work just as well with crocheting. I mostly knit, so I always say that by default. Can’t wait to see what you make!
Those owls are super cute!
Aren’t they? I think they are the first things from this list that I am going to try (even though I’m not the best crocheter ever).