It may come as a surprise from perusing through pages of my crochet smiling creatures and sugary dessert recipes that I am a DIE-HARD football fan. As a Pittsburgh native, I have followed the Steelers for a large chunk of my almost-26 years; a loss has been known to ruin the rest of my day, while our Superbowl win a season-and-a-half ago was surreal, amazing, and *almost* anticlimactic. I can watch the Immaculate Reception on loop and get chills every time for one of the greatest plays in football history. (See it here!) Oh how I love it!

With that, it is probably not surprising that I came up with a crochet football beer cozy, to accompany the now off-season baseball cozy in my sports cozy collection. This one is very similar in pattern to the baseball one, but the embroidery part is slightly easier. Pattern is after the jump!

You will need a G hook, football-brown yarn, and white yarn.

With brown yarn:

Ch 2; 6 sc into 2nd chain from the hook
Ch 1; 2 sc into each ch; join with first sc (12 sc)
Ch 1; 2sc into same stitch, sc in next. Repeat (2sc, sc) all the way around; join with first sc (18 sc)
Ch 1; sc into same stitch, sc in next, 2sc into next. Repeat (sc, sc, 2 sc) all the way
around; join with first sc (24 sc)
Ch 2; sc into same stitch, sc in next, sc in next, 2 sc into next. Repeat (sc, sc, sc, 2 sc) all
the way around; join with first sc (30 sc)

This forms the base of the cozy. Turn the work so that the right size faces you (the right
side will be visible when you finish the cozy). From here on out, do not join.

For the next two rounds, sc around.
For the next two rounds, make decrease in each round. Check if it’s going to fit, by slipping it onto the bottom of a bottle.

Sc for approximately 13 more rows, but keep the bottle on hand to keep checking how it looks. Join and finish off.

The embroidered stitching is the hardest part b/c of all the straight lines. On a football, there is one long white line of stitching and eight small stitches that cut the line horizontally. Measure out these 8 lines with pins for a guide.

With white yarn and a needle, come up at the base of the cozy on the inside and go down at the top, staying about an inch away from the pins.

Slip it on the bottle to see how tight you should pull on the yarn. Pin the yarn at the top to the cozy if you want.

For the horizontal stitches, I lined them up with the pins and made each one 3/4 inch. After doing every two, slip the cozy onto the bottle to see if your stitches are straight. (It’s hard! I had to do it a couple times!)

Fasten off the yarn at the bottom, on the inside of the cozy. This will fit most 12-oz bottles and even fits cans!

ADDENDUM!: So, in making a few of these, another option is to do the sewing of white yarn while the cozy is on the bottle. Make the long vertical line with it off, but then slip the cozy back on the bottle. Make the horizontal “stitches” over top of the pins and take out each pin as you go along. I think this makes it easier to make everything as straight as possible, while being able to see how it will lay once on the bottle.