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Colorful knitting, crochet, latch hook and macrame from craft book author & designer Heidi Gustad.

Advanced Intarsia Knitting Tips

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This tutorial is part of our Read Along Knit Along series & is brought to you by LoveKnitting, Eucalan & Knitter’s Pride. Learn about our sponsors and enter to win the RALKAL prize pack here. 

For your best intarsia results ever, you've got to visualize the process of knitting your pattern. Click through for some of the best tips and tricks to level up your intarsia knitting.
At some point in your intarsia knitting career, you might find yourself wondering how to perfect your approach to knitting several colors of yarn at the same time. This thought will likely come to mind if you’re knitting intarsia and you’re needing two or three (or more!) lengths of the same color of yarn to work a single row of a project. If you’re in this position, I’ve got some favorite tips and tricks just for you!

For your best intarsia results ever, you've got to visualize the process of knitting your pattern. Click through for some of the best tips and tricks to level up your intarsia knitting.

An in-depth look at how to approach intarsia knitting

Let me introduce you to a little something I like to call “imagiknitting.” ;)

See? Basically, you’re going to look at your intarsia chart, and grab a pencil and knitting needle. Then you’re going to imagine the process of knitting your project, row by row, keeping track of your place (especially right and wrong side rows) with your needle. As you work, you’ll identify where you’re going to need to introduce a new piece of yarn and mark it, continuing the process all the way through your chart. Next, you’ll do a little bit of addition to know how many stitches of each color you’re working. From there, you can use your favorite intarsia tail estimation technique, you can create your bobbins/balls/lengths of yarn for each color of your project, and you’re finally ready to cast on, project fully planned from start to finish. For folks who really prefer to keep their intarsia projects organized as they go, this tutorial will help connect a few dots for you!

For your best intarsia results ever, you've got to visualize the process of knitting your pattern. Click through for some of the best tips and tricks to level up your intarsia knitting.
For your best intarsia results ever, you've got to visualize the process of knitting your pattern. Click through for some of the best tips and tricks to level up your intarsia knitting.

This tutorial is part of our Read Along Knit Along series & is brought to you by LoveKnitting, Eucalan & Knitter’s Pride. Learn about our sponsors and enter to win the RALKAL prize pack here. 

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Comments

  1. I was wondering how you suggest knitting intarsia in seed stitch. I’m currently trying a sweater pattern and can’t get the color changes right because of the knit-purl / purl-knit transititons.

    Reply

    • I am looking for help doing the color change in seed as well. My pattern instruction says to twist on WS. I’m not sure what that means.

      Reply

      • That means that the interlocking action (when you change from one color of yarn to another) occurs on the wrong side of your work. Most intarsia technique calls for doing the interlocking action on the WS all the time, so this instruction feels like they may have intended it to be more of a reminder. That is just a guess on my part however. Does that make sense? -Heidi

        Reply

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