Japanese patterns

There are a lot of great online sources for free Japanese knitting and crochet patterns. Here are the ones I find most useful. Most are charted, so you don’t need to know Japanese to knit or crochet them. If you need help figuring out the yarn, hook, and gauge info, though, a great place to ask for help is the Japanese knitting & crochet group on Ravelry.

Pierrot Yarns (Gosyo Co., Ltd.) – crochet, hand-knitting, machine-knitting (esp. prior to 2003), weaving, and a few odds & ends (weaving, knotwork, etc.)
- main index here (by publication date)
- categorized index here
Clover Japan
- note: the patterns on Clover are scattered all over the place. There’s sort of an index here, but it doesn’t seem to list everything. Some of various patterns can be found on these pages:
Hamanaka
Mainichi Amimono
Daruma
Yukiya
Omura
Passage
- easy knits (mostly women’s sweaters)
- women’s sweaters (apparently not easy ones)
- men’s sweaters
- children’s sweaters
Konemizuya (mostly tawashi)
Nikke Victor
Tezukuritown (free patterns from various Nihon Vogue publications, as well as some supplemental patterns that haven’t appeared in print) – log-in required
Atelier – these are user-submitted tutorials. Some are charted, some are written out in Japanese.
Woolmark
Furachi no amimono zanmai (不埒な編み物三昧)

17 thoughts on “Japanese patterns”

Thanks you a lot for these links; i would try to knit a japanese pattern. And can you help me about pierrot yarn, are they selling for internet ?
Est-ce que tu parles français, mon anglais est très très mauvais!
A bientôt.
Muriel

Hi Muriel,

Glad to be of help. Yes, Pierrot Yarns does sell on the internet. You can visit their online store (in English) here:

http://gosyo.shop.multilingualcart.com/

Thanks for gathering all these links into one place.

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Thank you very much..This is very useful for me..God Bless You..

Excellant links wont get any crochet/knitting done too busy drooling over everything…LOL
Thank you

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pls help to search for japan knitting symbol chart. Thank You.

Hello,
Can you help me read a Japanese Crochet Patter for Hello Kitty granny square?
You can email me at cdnlooney49@hotmail.com and I can send you the pattern I am having trouble reading,
Thank you so much!

Thank you so much. I’ve been looking for them for months.

Thanks you a lot for these links.
Daisy

Thank you for the links <3

we search folk dance pattern, not japanese pattern

Hi,
i need some clarification for the ribbon accent bag instructions. i am new to graph instructions. What does that thick line running along the graph from end to end ean? Is this a space in the instructions? do we skipp all those stitches?

dancingbarefoot | June 29, 2015 at 8:47 PM

It’s a way of abbreviating the pattern when there isn’t room for the whole thing. It means “work even” – that is, just keep working in pattern up until the row/round where it begins to change on the chart.

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