Cottage Case

Cottage Case Knitting Pattern by Amanda Berry

Project Overview

The Cottage Case is a charming knitted pencil case or small storage pouch designed by Amanda Berry. This intermediate-level knitting project creates a functional accessory featuring a decorative cottage motif, making it an ideal home for pens, pencils, and other small items. The finished case measures 18cm in length and incorporates colorful intarsia color-work techniques to bring the cottage design to life.

What is Being Made

This pattern produces a small zippered pouch with a cottage-themed design. The case serves as practical storage for writing implements and small accessories while showcasing decorative architectural details including a window and door frame embroidered onto the knitted fabric.

Techniques Used

The Cottage Case employs intarsia color-work as its primary decorative technique. Intarsia is an advanced color-knitting method where separate bobbins of yarn are used for different colored sections of the design, allowing for large blocks of color to be incorporated without carrying yarn across the back of the work. This technique creates clean, professional-looking color transitions ideal for pictorial designs like the cottage motif featured in this pattern.

Additional finishing techniques include seaming to join the knitted pieces together, embroidery for adding fine details to the window and door frames, and zipper insertion to create a functional closure for the case.

Stitches Used

• Knit (k) – The fundamental stitch used to create the fabric base
• Purl (p) – Used in combination with knit stitches to create texture and structure

The pattern uses basic knit and purl stitches as the foundation, with the visual interest and complexity coming from the color-work application rather than elaborate stitch patterns.

Materials and Yarn Specifications

The Cottage Case is worked in DK weight yarn (also known as double knitting, light worsted, or 8 ply). Less than 25 grams of yarn in each of five colors is required: White, Yellow, Green, Blue, and Red. Additionally, a few meters of Grey DK weight yarn is needed for embroidering the window and door frame details.

Recommended yarn brands include Hayfield Bonus DK, Stylecraft Special DK, and Paintbox Yarns Simply DK – all 100% acrylic DK weight yarns available in a wide range of colors, making it easy to customize the cottage design with your preferred color palette.

Needles and Notions

• A pair of 4mm (US 6) single-pointed needles with a minimum length of 20cm
• A darning or tapestry needle for seaming the knitted pieces
• Bobbins for managing the multiple yarn colors in the intarsia color-work
• An 18cm zipper for the case closure
• Sewing needle and thread for attaching the zipper
• An 8mm yellow button for the door handle detail

Difficulty Level

This pattern is rated as intermediate difficulty. While it uses only basic knit and purl stitches, the intarsia color-work technique requires experience managing multiple yarn colors and bobbins simultaneously, making it suitable for knitters who have mastered fundamental skills and are ready to expand into color-work methods.

Pattern Format

The Cottage Case pattern is available as a free downloadable PDF from designer Amanda Berry, making it an accessible project for knitters looking to explore color-work techniques without additional cost.