Dreaming of early summer evenings, writing letters to a friend and mild mornings, walking through a blooming garden to the song of birds, watching the sun rise.
I’m all about embracing a slow and simple life, marrying our modern day conveniences with the wonderful charm of timeless crafts.
But where to keep stitchmarkers when enjoying some mindful knitting time or all the colourful threads when doing embroidery?
How to store ink cartridges of a fountain pen for writing those letters?
The cottage coin pouch is a great companion, to securely hold onto all those little bits and trinkets that tend to loosely fly around in bags and drawers!
Using only about 30-60m (33-66 yards) of yarn, it offers itself as a perfect canvas, to display those special scraps and mini skeins, that might be too precious for you, to want to put in a scrappy project with other yarns.
This post contains additional information and tips for the pattern.
Click here to be taken to the free PDF-pattern on Ravelry.
Treasuring Yarn To Keep Treasures:
Yarn Choice
I designed this pattern specifically, for using those special fingering weight scraps and mini skeins a lot of us knitters have laying around.
This is why the pattern uses fingering weight yarn held double or with a strand of mohair.
Feel free to substitute the mohair with suri, if that’s what you prefer!
Using fingering weight yarn held with mohair, knit up at the gauge the pattern calls for, creates a light and airy fabric with an elegant halo.
A pouch like this is perfect to show off specled yarns and use small scraps that might not be enough to hold double.
It creates a gorgeous, dainty looking pouch fit for a fairy!
Using fingering weight yarn held double, knit up to the gauge of the pattern, creates a quite dense, sturdy fabric.
It holds its shape nicely, even when heavily loaded with coins. It also makes a nice canvas for embroidery.
This is the option I’d recommend for the textured version – the dragon skin coin pouch.
You could also try holding two different colours together, for a marrled effect.
Of course you can also substitute in a single strand of DK weight yarn. This will create a nice and simple look with just a bit of drape to the fabric.
Yarn Usage
- Fingering + Mohair: about 30m (33 yards) of each
- Fingering held double: about 30m (33 yards) of each strand or 60m (66yards) in total
- DK: about 30m (33 yards)
When Crafts Collide: Construction
The construction of the pouch is simple:
It’s cast on using a magic loop cast on and worked from the bottom up.
It’s worked in one piece, first increasing till we have the right amount of stitches, then worked straight up.
The clasp is what actually gives it its classic coin pouch shape.
This pattern works for what I found to be the standard size for clasps for a coin pouch.
You can easily find metal closures like this online on Amazon, craft store pages and even on Etsy!
These are the one’s I use: Hello, I’m a link! ^^
I actually got the construction for the bottom of the pouch from the way crocheted amigurumi are typically worked.
It starts out with 6 stitches, followed by a round of doubling each stitch, then a round of doubling every second stitch, then every third and so on.
This spreads out the increases in a spiral like pattern which I find can look quite elegant if applied in the right context. In the context of the cottage coin pouch, I think it flows nicely into to the stockinette fabric, resulting in a cohesive look.
For the dragon skin coin pouch, it actually works out looking very cohesive as well, seamlessly flowing in the spirally texture pattern.
Spreading Stitches: Making It Work On DPNs
While I usually use DPNs in a set of 5 (having my stitches spread across 4 of them and using the 5th to knit), the way the bottom of the pouch is constructed, it makes it a lot easier to work with only 4 needles at first, as the stitches can be evenly divided by 3.
With the stitches spread out this way, you have an increase in the middle and at the end of each set of stitches per needle, making it easy to keep track of them.
I start out by putting two stitches each over 3 needles right after the cast on. The first 2 rounds can be a bit fiddly, but it’s smooth sailing after!
If you find yourself struggling with the magic loop cast on, try using a crochet hook to do it, then just slip the stitches off the hook and onto your needles to get started with the knitting.
After round 9, I use round 10 to spread my stitches onto 4 needles.
For the plain stockinette version, this means the number of stitches per needle won’t be the exact same, as the stitch count isn’t dividable by 4.
I like to spread my stitches as follows:
Needle 1 – 14 stitches
Needle 2 – 13 stitches
Needle 3 – 14 stitches
Needle 4 – 13 stitches
For the dragon skin coin pouch, the stitch count can be evenly divided by 4, so you can simply have 14 stitches per needle.
Extra Touches: Ensuring A Beautiful Outcome
There’s a few different things you can do, to give your pouch this extra bit of neatness.
The first and most important step for this project is blocking!
I know – it’s an extra step that takes waiting time and a lot of people don’t like to block their projects. However, for these pouches blocking truly does make all the difference.
We’re working with two strands of yarn on a somewhat dense gauge, so after binding off your pouch will most likely look a bit… sad. It’ll be scrunched up, tight, probably a bit messy and look too short – this is normal!
Here’s where blocking comes to the rescue!
Blocking relaxes the fibers into their new shape, making the fabric open up and be less stiff. It can also even out the stitches quite a bit.
You should block your fabric BEFORE sewing it into the clasp, to ensure a neat outcome and prevent rust, since you’d have to soak the metal part in water if you tried to block it after assembling the coin pouch.
A little tip for blocking: I like to pull my pouch over the top of a sock blocker and keep in place with the second sock blocker on top. This ensures the pouch will dry in the perfect shape for sewing it into the closure
Sewing
The most important step to make everything neat and tidy is the sewing part.
The pattern already tells you how to make sure you spread out the fabric evenly within the clasp.
When sewing your pouch into the clasp, make sure you have the bind off edge pushed all the way up between the front and back plates of the clasp, so that the edge is fully enclosed by the frame, once it’s sewn in.
The joints however, should be kept on the outside of the pouch, so guide your fabric along the inside of those.
Use the holes in the clasp to sew your pouch into the frame.
Start by pushing your needle through your fabric from the inside, then through the first hole of one half of the clasp right after a joint, from the inside as well.
Keep sewing in a running stitch till the last hole.
The clasp might not have an even amount of stitches on each side, so you’ll likely find yourself pushing the needle through the last hole from the inside out, with no next hole to go back in, before the joint.
In this case, you can simply sew into the fabric right next to the frame.
This will not be noticeable in the end prouduct at all.
DO NOT just sew into the first hole of the other side as the long stitch over the joint will restrict it and can even get caught and rip, unravelling the seam.
Now carry your sewing yarn along the inside of the pouch and work the second half of the clasp the same as you did for the first.
To hide the long stitch, weave your needle through a few stitches on the inside of the pouch as if to weave in an end. This will hide the yarn and keep it safe from getting snagged and ripping.
After the second half, instead of weaving through just a few stitches, weave in your ends fully, before cutting the yarn.
Do the same for the end on the cast on if you haven’t already.
The Dragon Skin Coin Pouch
As mentioned previously, the cottage coin pouch is also available in a textured version called the dragon skin coin pouch.
It’s its own individual pattern, because it requires a slightly different stitch count and of course a texture pattern, which changes the process quite a bit.
I descided to give it its own pattern, to properly explain everything.
While this texture pattern is quite common and used in many different patterns, it has become the dragon skin texture to me.
This is due to this free pattern called the Dragon Skin Dicebag: click here to get taken to the dragon skin dice/treasure bag pattern
In homage to the pattern, that sparked my love for this texture and because calling it anything else feels like blasphemy, I called this version the dragon skin coin pouch.
Everything you need to know to make this pattern, is explained in detail in the free PDF pattern.
Click here to be taken to the free PDF pattern on Ravelry.
While it does have a slightly different stitch count, the texture tends to pull the fabric together just a bit, so if your stockinette gauge meets the requirement stated in the pattern, it’ll come out just right as well.
All the instructions and tips for the cottage pouch in this post, apply here as well unless clearly stated otherwise.
Thank you! <3
This is the first knitting pattern I ever made, so thank you so so much for taking a look at it! And thank you to the moon and back if you’re actually making it!
It came into existance on pure chance, as I wanted to make a simple knitted coin pouch with a metal clasp and was shocked to see there wasn’t a single pattern out there to make what I was looking for!
I hope with this pattern, I can fill that void and offer the option to create a pouch like this for everyone – regardless of the skillset or time to make it up on their own.
While I’ve written a few crochet patterns in the past, I was never brave enough to actually publish any of them.
I hope that this can be the first one of a whole bunch of patterns, allowing all the ideas I kept hidden away in my brain, to blossom and grow freely!
If you encounter any problems or accessibility issues in one or both of the patterns, please let me know in a comment or via e-mail!
wildflower-fibercrafts@protonmail.com
I don’t use any social media and am not an active part of the online knitting community, so I couldn’t get these patterns tested properly beforehand.
I’d highly appreciate any feedback, so I can make updates if necessary and learn and improve for my next patterns to come!
Thank you in advance!
I know ravelry isn’t acessible for everyone. If this is the case for you and you want to make this pattern, feel free to write me a mail so I can send it to you that way.
Also feel free to contact me if you have any questions! ^^
Thank you so much for taking the time to read my rambling!
May your days be filled with joy and fun, knitting your own Cottage Coin Pouch
Have a wonderful Week!
Snowdrop