Corner To Corner Hot Water Bottle Cover Tutorial

MATERIALS

Large standard size hot water bottle (34cm tall x 20cm wide)

8ply yarn (I used New Fashion yarn) in any colours you like

3.5mm hook (you need to use a hook .5mm smaller than you normally would as you want the C2C to be nice and dense to keep the heat in)

SIZING

You will be working a rectangle C2C pattern measuring:

No neck pattern - 34 boxes high X 13 boxes wide. 

Neck pattern - 37 boxes X 13 boxes wide.

Remember that sizing can depend on yarn size, hook size and tension.

TIME

This pattern will take a few hours depending on your crochet speed. A great pattern for taking on public transport, to the doctors surgery, to the kids footy training, or a night on the sofa watching TV.

TUTORIAL

This tutorial is not a C2C tutorial. You must already know how to do C2C including increasing and decreasing rows. If you don't know how to do it, check out youtube for video help.

There are a variety of decorative tops you can make on your bottles. You can do a top that stops at the shoulder of the bottle and leaves the neck exposed, or you can do a top that bunches up around the neck.

The following photo shows where you would start working from to do the bottle pattern with the neck:

I forgot to take a photo showing where you would start working from to do the bottle pattern without the neck, but here is a photo showing me working the C2C pattern until its wide enough for the width of the bottle.

PLEASE NOTE: yarn, hooks and tension can differ. It is best to make your pattern and check it against your own hot water bottle. I can write up a tutorial with the recommended yarn and hooks and sizing but yours still might turn out a different size to mine. Check your sizing against your own hot water bottle if you can.

To continue making your neck or no neck pattern, keep increasing your C2C rectangle. Lay your hot water bottle on the fabric to check sizing. If you're not checking against a bottle, just keep increasing to 13 boxes wide and decrease one side and increase the other to 34 or 37 boxes high.

Photos below show how to check sizing for both the neck pattern and no neck pattern:

Once you reach 34 or 37 boxes high (or the number of boxes you need in your tension to reach the top), start decreasing to finish off your rectangle C2C pattern.

FOR THE NO NECK PATTERN...

Photo below show stitch markers where you need to start single crocheting both the front and back fabric together and down the side to the bottom. You need to do this for the left and right sides. You need to leave the gap at the top to get bottle in and out. Please read the JOINING paragraph.

FOR THE NECK PATTERN...

You can skip straight to the joining paragraph.

JOINING
You have two choices with the single crochet joining (remembering that C2C has no right or wrong side, so you can use any side)...

- you can single crochet down the sides and have that as a border

- or you can single crochet down the sides and turn the fabric inside out and have the join on the inside of the cover

Neither of these methods is better than the other - it is just personal preference.

DECORATIVE CORD

Now if you like, you can finish off with a cord to tie around the neck of the cover. You can choose any method of making a cord but the easiest is to chain a long crochet chain between 80-90cm long. Then weave the cord inbetween the boxes (NOT into stitches but inbetween your boxes) and around the neck, then tie a double knot and tie a bow, and you're all done!

Enjoy your new hot water bottle cover.