Colourwork knitting charts: jacquard and intarsia

Two ways to knit with colour

Jacquard, also called stranded colourwork or — in its traditional Shetland form — Fair Isle, uses two (sometimes more) colours in the same row. The colour you are not using is carried loosely across the back of the work until it is needed again. The result is a warm, double-layered fabric with small, repeating motifs.

Intarsia is used for large, separate areas of colour — a single big motif, a geometric block, a picture. Each area has its own yarn, and nothing is carried across the back: at every colour change the two yarns are twisted together so that no hole forms.

Floats: the secret of tidy jacquard

The strands carried across the back are called floats. If they are too tight, the fabric puckers and loses its stretch; if they are too long, fingers and buttons catch on them. Before each colour change, spread the stitches on the right needle so the float has its full width.

Many knitters keep floats to about five stitches, or roughly 2.5 cm. When a motif needs a longer stretch of one colour, the carried yarn is caught behind a stitch halfway along. When you design a chart, you can avoid the problem from the start by keeping long single-colour stretches short.

Choose colours that read well

A colour motif is only visible if the colours differ in lightness. Two colours of very different hue but similar lightness — a mid red and a mid green, for example — blur into each other from a distance.

A simple test: take a black-and-white photo of the yarns side by side. If they look like two different greys, the motif will read clearly. If they look the same, choose a lighter or a darker shade for one of them.

Chart the motif

In a colour chart each square is one stitch, coloured the way the stitch will be knitted. Remember that knitted stitches are usually wider than they are tall, so a motif drawn on a square grid looks a little flatter once it is knitted. Compare the drawing with your gauge before you commit to it.

Plan the repeat so that it divides evenly into the number of stitches of the piece; in the round, the pattern should meet itself at the beginning of the round without a jog in the middle of the front.

Swatch in the pattern

Stranded colourwork is usually tighter than plain stockinette knitted with the same needles, because the floats hold the fabric together. Always knit the swatch in the colour pattern — and in the round if the garment will be knitted in the round — and calculate the garment from that swatch, not from the plain one.

Colourwork in KnitLab Studio

In KnitLab you paint the background of the cells one by one or in a single gesture, then move and repeat a finished fragment together with its colours. The photo pattern tool turns a photo or an illustration into a colourwork chart: you choose the number of colours, remove the background, correct single cells and insert the motif into your main chart.

Repeat lines on the front, the back and the sleeves show where a motif fits on the garment, so you can check the whole composition before you cast on.

See this tool in KnitLab Studio →