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Learn how to knit intarsia and toast the season with this easy to knit Christmas tree coffee cup cozy. For this design you’ll follow a colorwork chart for the tree, which you can embellish as you like before sewing into a sleeve to fit your travel coffee cup.
Easy Intarsia Knitting Pattern
Intarsia is a knitting technique that allows you to work blocks of color without carrying the yarn you aren’t working with across the back of the work. This makes it a little less stiff and a little stretchier for fitting on your favorite cup.
Lots of knitters seem to be intimidated by intarsia, and it’s true that complicated projects need a lot of careful yarn management, but this is a basic project that only requires three balls of yarn: two of your background color and one of your contrast color.
Check out my post all about how to knit intarsia for the basics, which conveniently shows photos of another version of this cozy being knit (the tree needed to be smaller is the only difference).
How to Knit a Christmas Tree Coffee Cup Cozy
As mentioned above, this Christmas tree coffee cup cozy knitting pattern is worked flat, from the bottom up. The edges are worked in garter stitch, with the body in stockinette and the tree worked on the red background in intarsia. This is a really simple pattern you don’t really even have to use the chart for once you have the base in place, because you’re working one fewer stitch in green on each side of the tree on every other row.
Once the knitting is done you can embellish the tree with beads, embroidery, buttons or anything else you like, or leave it plain.
Supplies
- about 27 yards of color A and 8 yards of color B, both of which are medium/worsted weight yarn (mine are red and green but you can use whatever colors you like) My red is unknown from my stash (it might be Cascade 220 in Christmas Red) and the green is Brown Sheep Nature Spun worsted in color Elf Green
- pair of size 7 US/4.5mm knitting needles
- yarn needle
- embellishments, thread and embroidery needle (optional)
Gauge
Gauge isn’t that critical but I got 17.5 stitches and 23 rows per 4 inches/10 cm, or 4.375 stitches and 5.75 rows per inch/2.5 cm in stockinette stitch
Finished Size
When sewn up, the cozy is about 4.5 inches/11.4 cm tall and a little more than 7 inches/17.78 cm around at the widest part. It is slightly shaped to fit a tapered to go coffee cup.
Christmas Tree Coffee Cup Cozy Knitting Pattern
Cast on 35 stitches in color A. Knit 4 rows.
On the next row, knit 1, knit in the front and back, knit to the last stitch, knit in the front and back, knit 1. 37 stitches.
Purl the next row.
Begin working tree chart, working blank stitches in color A and green stitches in color B. (The gray blocks on the sides indicate stitches that do not exist yet.) Increase as above on rows 3 and 7 as indicated on the chart. You’ll have 41 stitches total at the end of row 7.
When the chart is complete, work 2 more rows in stockinette stitch in color A.
Knit 4 rows.
Bind off.
Embellishing Your Christmas Tree
You can use whatever random supplies to embellish your Christmas tree coffee cup cozy knitting pattern. You could leave it plain if you’d rather, or add as much or as little bling as you like, to the tree, the background or both.
I used a purple star sequin at the top of my tree, then sewed beads randomly around the tree as ornaments of lights or whatever you want to think of them.
This is the kind of project where it will be hard to decide when it is done because it’s so fun to stitch on the little details.
Looking for more fun holiday coffee cup cozies? Check out my Halloween coffee cup cozy, with a jack o’lantern face worked in duplicate stitch.
