Sofa Cover using the Addi Express Kingsize

I’ve wanted to knit a cover for our sofa in the lounge for a long time. I’ve started a couple of times, but it was going to take forever and to be honest, I wanted to make it in time for the holidays. So, after watching a few vlogs on YouTube, I purchased the Addi Express Kingsize.

This was perhaps an ambitious first project on the knitting machine, and I did have to start again a couple of times when I was halfway through cranking a tube and accidentally dropped some stitches.

I decided I’d like the covers to be colourful squares. I’m thinking of Elmer the Elephant in similar colours to my patchwork wall hanging that hangs behind the television on the wall opposite the sofa.

As I was creating long tubes of fabric, my first thought was how I would join these together. I watched the Simple Stripes Baby Blanket vlog on YouTube by Koala Knits and Knacks, and she clearly explained how to join the strips together using a crochet hook.

Each square is 40 rounds long, with nine squares in each tube (360 rounds). I made 11 tubes/strips for both the back and the seat of the sofa cushions. This sofa used to be a futon bed, but the futon part was wrecked over the years by the dogs sleeping on the back of the futon mattress so they could look out of the window and watch the world going by. So, I got two large foam pieces delivered from GB Foam Direct in England that needed to be covered. The sofa has a beautiful and solidly made metal framework.

I used 25 colours of Stylecraft Special Aran to make the cover. I used 54 balls of yarn and only had a few small balls of yarn left over. Each square took approximately 24g to knit. The Stylecraft Special Aran comes in 100g balls and is machine washable at 30 deg. It can also be tumble dried in the low setting. This was important to me, as Bene (collie) likes to sleep on the sofa, and I wash the throws on it weekly.

The colours I used were; Aster (1003), Cloud Blue (1019), Raspberry (1023), Burgundy (1035), Plum (1061), Teal (1062), Meadow (1065), Pale Rose (1080), Bluebell (1082), Magenta (1084), Royal (1117), Lavender (1188), Denim (1302), Aspen (1422), Emperor (1425), Wisteria (1432), Storm Blue (1722), Sage (1725), Duck Egg (1820), Pistachio (1822), Empire (1829), Purple (1840), Cornish Blue (1841), French Navy (1854), Proper Purple (1855).

I used three balls each of Proper Purple, Cornish Blue, Emperor and Teal and two balls of all the other colours.

I think my next large project will be a cosy small blanket. I need to choose which yarn I’d like to use for it.