Intarsia and Stranded Knitting: Two Ways To Add Color To Your Knitting
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Creating Pattern Through Color
One of the most effective ways to add interest to your knitting is through the use of color. But, many new knitters don't know where to start when it comes to changing yarns or reading color charts.
In this lens we'll explore the two most common ways to change color, intarsia and stranded colorwork. Intarsia is used for large areas of color, like the heart in this picture. Stranded knitting (also called stranded colorwork) creates more intricate patterns, like the pink band below the heart.
(photo by Brian Sawyer)
Contents at a Glance
Getting Ready
Using bobbins and butterflies
If you are going to change color in the middle of a row of knitting, I highly recommend using yarn bobbins. Bobbins hang off the back of your knitting, holding a small amount of yarn. They may seems scary at first, trust me. These are much easier to deal with than full sized sceins of yarn.You can buy plastic bobbins of various sizes, or you can make your own. Here are two videos showing you how to do just that.
The first one demonstrates how to make your own bobbins from scrap cardboard. (It's a crochet-centered video, but the bobbin she makes can be used for either craft.)
The second video shows you how to make a butterfly. A butterfly is a way of making a bobbin without the plastic (or cardboard) bit. You wrap the yarn around itself in a specfic way so that it neatly hangs in the back of your work, while still being able to reel out new yarn to you as you knit.
Intarsia
Creating blocks of color
It's a fairly easy method of color knitting. Simply knit until you get to the place where you want to change color. Then drop your main color, and knit with the new color. No big scarriness. It's very much like adding in a new ball when you run out of yarn.
The only thing that's different is that you must twist the two yarns around each other when you change color. If you didn't do this, you would just be knitting two seperate panels of fabric with no connection to each other.
This video shows the twisting very clearly. She changes color at the beginning of the row, but this technique will work just fine in the middle of one. Also, she carries the tail of the new color for the first three stitches. This can be a way to keep the back of your knitting from being too cluttered, but it can also make a lumpy spot in your knitting. Use this technique with caution.
Intarsia Inside-out
What the back of an intarsia piece looks like
Here's a good picture of the wrong side of a piece of intarsia knitting. Note the twisted yarns where the two colors meet.
(photo by Emily L.)
Real World Intarsia
Pics of intarsia knitting
Intarsia isn't confined to bad Christmas sweaters. It's great way to play around with color. I like to think of it as painting with yarn. It's perfect for creating realistic or abstract images, as well as lettering. Here are some great examples of what you can do with intarsia knitting.
Reading Charts
When working in the round (also called circular knitting) all lines of a color chart are read from right to left. Simply follow along as you knit across your needle.
When working flat (working one side, then turning to work the other) right side rows are read from right to left, and wrong side rows are read from left to right.
Stranded Knitting
Creating intricate details
Back to Christmas sweaters. This time it's the ones with the snowflakes or little dots all over the top half and sleeves. This is stranded knitting.
Probably invented as a way to add extra warmth to a garmet, stranded knitting involves carrying two different yarns as you knit. The "live" yarn is actively knitted while the other is just hanging out behind the work. When you want to change colors, drop the live yarn and pick up the other. Now, this one becomes the live yarn and you are ready to knit with it.
Because stranded knitting is used for quick color changes, rather than blocks color, there is no need to twist the two yarns together. But, if you happen to knit more than five stitches before changing color consider "wrapping" your yarn. This is demonstrated in the video below.
Check out this video by KnitPicks for a good introduction to stranded knitting. It shows you how to knit holding a color in each hand, and gives you sneak peek at Fair Isle and chart reading, subjects also covered in this lens.
Another Way To Hold The Yarns
Floats
What the wrong side of stranded knitting looks like
This action of carrying two yarns throughout the whole garmet creates a double layer of fabric. Little strands of yarn, called floats, cover the wrong side of the work. These floats are created when the non-live yarn is dragged across the back of the work.
When using stranded knitting be sure to keep these floats at an even tension. Too loose, and your knitting looks like it's falling apart at the color change. Too tight, and your fabric will pucker.
(photo by Jessica)
Fair Isle Knitting
Wild and Crazy Stranded Knitting
Named after an island off the coast of Scotland, Fair Isle is multi colored stranded knitting. It peaked in popularity in the 1920's when the Prince of Wales (Edward VIII) sported his collection of Fair Isle vests while golfing.Fair Isle may look scary to knit, but it's really no different than stranded knitting. Each row still only uses two colors at a time. You simply change the colors at the beginning of a row to create the rainbow-ish effect.
(photo by Katherine)
Design Your Own
The knit stitch is rectangular, so normal graph paper doesn't give an accurate preview of what a charted color pattern will look like in your project. Click here to print graph paper that matches your stitch and row gauge.
Further Reading
My Fiber Art Lenses
Guest Book
Chime in about your color knitting projects, leave a link to your favorite pattern, or blab on about your favorite tutorial. Got a question? I'll do my best to find the answer.
Thanks for reading my lens. Happy knitting! :)
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freyalou
Dec 24, 2011 @ 5:13 pm | delete
- Thank you for such an informative lens. One of my resolutions for next year is to get to grips with intarsia and stranded knitting. I've tried it a couple of times, but always ended up in a tangle! Hopefully some of these techniques will make it easier.
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MerryM Dec 24, 2011 @ 8:41 pm | delete
- Ya, keep on trying. Stranded can actually be easier if you hold one color in each had. And just remember to twist your yarns for intarsia. Learning a big patch of color v/s little blocks of it helps with intarsia, too. Good luck!
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Helena
Sep 19, 2011 @ 2:30 pm | delete
- That would be "Prince of Wales." Whales are something different.
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MerryM Sep 23, 2011 @ 11:36 am | delete
- Hahaha! Thanks for catching my mistake I can't believe I did that. I apologize to anyone from Wales who happened to stop by the lens. Please forgive my occasional bought of stupid-American-ness. I'll go take care of it right away.
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Ladymermaid
May 28, 2011 @ 12:45 pm | delete
- Adding colors was indeed the hardest thing for me when I was knitting. In fact I still don't have the hang of it completely. Your lens just may help me conquer that. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge here at Squidoo.
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by MerryM
Hi, I'm Merry. I've been knitting for about eight years, ever since the needlepoint store where I worked opened a knitting section. I now teach knitti... more »
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