(This may be even more evident from the wrong side, shown at right.) Basically, the idea is that one color will be slightly above the other on the inside of the fabric and that position determines the dominant color. Because of yarn dominance. Stranded Colorwork 101: Understanding Color Dominance, Stranded colorwork knitting is traditional, stunning and looks so intricate! Eg on OPs pic, the usual choice would be for the white to be dominant in order to pop the detail of those sections. Arne & Carlos are wrong about that there are lots of experts with just as much experience in colorwork who would also disagree with them. Next wrap or "pick" the yarn in your left hand as you normally would to knit with it, but do not complete the stitch. A Fair Isle vest would probably be included in even the tiniest of my personal capsule wardrobe so it seems absurd that I dont actually have one I made myself. Floats that are too long run the risk of getting caught as you put the item on. Some of that extra yarn naturally transfers into the stitch, making the stitches in the lower yarn bigger. I have forwarded your comment to the proper department. The cowl may be knit in Brooklyn Tweed Shelter for a more classic look or Brooklyn Tweed Tones for a modern twist. One yarn will be carried below the other, and that makes it travel further to get to the needle. It IS possible to knit colourwork too loosely, but its much more common for it to be tight - so make sure you swatch, and go up a needle size or two if needed! Regardless of your weaving background, we'll provide some beginning weaving projects in this blog article for you to try. Even if you cant remember which is dominant, always have the colors in the same position so your colorwork looks crisp. 4. Depending on your pattern, you may need to switch colors quite often, such as every few stitches, so it is important to have a comfortable way of holding your yarn strands. Here are seven quick tips that will immediately improve the look of your color work. Process and Product Knitters: Which Are You? It is on You Tube. If you are working a sweater, for example, and there is a pattern around the yoke, it is likely that you want the contrast color of the pattern to stand out from the main body color of the sweater. As we knit, the completed stitches tend to bunch up on the right needle, making the width of the fabric seem narrower than it really is. Derived from graphic design elements, these fresh motifs include everything from geometric mountains, waves, and spirals to modern bikes . Think about which one you want to pop more and call that one the pattern color. Beautiful work and color choices. The finished cowl is 10.5 inches tall and 24 inches . There are a few reasons why stranded knitting can make a lumpy fabric, but this focuses on how color dominance can influence it. Im sorry. I just knit a sweater English style using color dominance method - having learned about it for the first time after 40 years of knitting! Thanks. They will overlap a bit. How does ease affect inclusive size ranges? In this example my dominant color is red, and the second . Three strands of lofty, woolen-spun Targhee-Columbia fleece are gently spun together into a plump yarn that looks like a single ply and has greater tensile strength and stitch definition than a true unspun yarn. Here are some benefits of crochet and tips on We've sent you an email with a link to update your password. When working color work, one color will always be the dominate color which will "pop" out of the fabric, while the other color will seem to recede. If you are working with one yarn in each hand, this can be accomplished easily by always working the dominant color Continental and the background color English: If you are working with both yarns held Continental, the dominant color should be held (counter-intuitively) on top, or closest to your fingertip: If you are working with both yarns held English, make sure to always cross the background color over top of the dominant color: Knitting Introduction to Stranded Knitting (Fair Isle), KnittingHolding the Yarn in Stranded Knitting, KnittingManaging Tension in Stranded Knitting, KnittingCatching Floats in Stranded Knitting, This is caused by the stranding of floats along the back of the work the yarn which is stranded. the lower yarn will be to the left of the upper yarn. I was wondering what happens with colour dominance when you have more than two colours per row. In the images below, we show what this under/over concept looks like. The visual is better for comprehendsion. On the top half of the piece, the navy stitches look a little bigger than the white stitches. All Rights Reserved. The strands can easily become twisted around each other if you always bring the next colour up in the same direction, which can also cause the pattern to recede and look little murkier than it would otherwise. When knitting with two colors, the two yarns cant be in exactly the same place. Keep in mind that everyone knits differently and you might find that youre comfortable somewhere in between! She notes that for most people, the background color should stay to the right and the prominent color should stay to the left. In this video, Michele Lee Bernstein demonstrates how yarn color dominance in stranded knitting works. How and in which hands the yarns are held is not that crucial although some positions may remind you to be consistent and remember which color is which. And yes, you can also throw both yarns using your left hand! the now-stranded investigators are unsure whether they can trust their own eyes, their instincts, one anotheror even themselves." . The color that is the drawing is the dominant color and should always be held in the leftmost position. Enter swatching. (every row is knit). With the background colour held on the index finger, it'll always be kept above the foreground colour to maintain colour dominance. When working with two colors in the left hand, keep the yarn orientation on your finger the same as on a right-side row and the dominance will be correct. I am working on a hat with a swirl 3 e wrap 2 over pattern. Keep the blue in your left every time you knit. Here are the most common methods of holding your yarn for stranded colourwork. Spearheads knits up lightning fast in two high-contrast colors of Quarry to fend off the winter chill. Each stitch is worked in its correct colour, bringing the yarn from the right or left hand. On this one I'm wrapping the background color & I'll post a few more videos showing how I wrap the other color & the purl side too. When working this type of colorwork, it's possible to control the color dominance in the project. Michele points out that every knitter should work a little colorwork swatch to determine how the yarn should be arranged for the way that they knit. This relates to something called color dominance (or yarn dominance). When working stranded colorwork with two or more colors, one color will always be more prominent on the right side of your work (the Dominant Color) while the other recedes to the background (the Background Color). Wet blocking makes a huge difference in the evenness of color work fabric. Lay it out flat, pat it into shape, then allow to dry, OR Your knitting style may make this opposite; make a little swatch and see. In this sample piece, I held the orange yarn dominant on the right side and the green yarn dominant on the left. Give The Gift Of Choice Shop E-Gift Cards, Free Shipping On Domestic Orders $100 And Up. cardigan, halyard, collar, cowl, video, knitting, knitting pattern. Show me an example!! * e.g. Do yourself a favor though and read all about color dominance. This is how I hold my yarn for stranded knitting with two colors. However, the effect is so subtle that I doubt anyone can tell without two pieces right next to each other like in the article. Wall Hangings Wall hangings are among the most well-liked Colorwork is among the best techniques to give your handmade masterpieces life. This will help to prevent vivid colours from bleeding one into the other. If you're using a technique that has a dominant yarn then all you need to do to avoid switching them unintentionally is ensure you are stranding them in the same order - background colour under or background colour over. Here is what our expert had to say: We dont currently have a video for that on our website, but Ive added it to our list for the future. Browse our exclusive collection of notions from AcademicHobbyist to keep your next project organized and easy! Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. Review of technique demonstration & color dominance; Begin & work on stranded colorwork section of cowl; I prefer to hold one in each hand but you might like both in one hand better. Advertisement Coins. A post shared by Andrea Rangel (@andrearknits) on Oct 5, 2015 at 9:22am PDT. That article in the photo even suggests swatching both and deciding which look you like best. If you're new to stranded color knitting, I recommend not worrying about yarn dominance for a while. Regularly pause to spread out the stitches on your right needle as you work (the ones you just finished knitting). And dont let yarns get tangled at all. I would like to see a video on how to work with 3 or more strands of yarn for Stranded Colorwork (Fair Isle). I know some knitters find it intimidating to work with two colors. In stranded knitting, as the yarns travel along behind the work, one strand will be below the other, and that strand will be slightly more prominent, its stitches just a fraction larger, than the stitches of the other strand; as you can see if you draw the strands of yarn along the back of the work, it's the strand . If you look closely, you can see that the orange crosses stand out more on the right side of the work. Color dominance is kind of devisive--some people believe that color dominance is a requirement for stranded colorwork, some people think going for color dominance is wrong, so you can kind of do whatever you want. I realized Ive been making mistakes because I have been switching the colors which I hold in my right hand, separated by my pointer finger. In the past I always put the dominant color (for any given row) on my dominant yarn holding hand (my left for continental knitting). The non-dominant floats traveling on the back push the dominant ones closer to the surface, making these stitches look bigger and therefore stand out better. Color dominance isn't about how you hold the yarns, it's about which color floats travel closest to the work (dominant color) and which furthest (non-dominant color). Michele shows another swatch where vertical columns are created with stranded colorwork. We have a video coming soon to The Knitting Circle about color dominance. . A colourwork yarn thimble can help with this by holding the strands apartfrom each other. Stranded colorwork gets its name from these strands of yarn, commonly called floats, that travel through the back of the work. Find out the latestnews from the studio such as sales, pattern releases, and new workshops or KALsour learning community, The Knitwork. It is the clearest one Ive come across. The crochet provisional cast-on is easy to work and unzips perfectly every time! Ive been designing knitting patterns for years and Ive found that I cant be tied down to one technique or project type in my design life. While 'which hand you hold the yarn in' can indicate which yarn dominant, it isn't always, because it depends on the order the yarns are crossed when you bring them in at the back. This may seem like a very small detail, but it can have a pretty large impact on the final result of a pattern. Sign up for a membership now! I agree with the general sentiment that you shouldn't be stressed over it, but I also wanted to be helpful, since it can help your color work pop more to think about dominance. If you set down your knitting, then later pick it up again, remember the correct positioning when setting up the strands around your fingers. Then you're doing it right. As long as the fabric is looking the way you want and you're not in pain there isn't really a wrong way? Let us know if any other questions come up. The biggest challenge with two-handed colourwork is getting even tension between the two hands. This is referred to as color dominance and a quick explanation is that when stranding 2 colors, one of them will physically fall below the other one as you work. Tags: Michele Bernstein, randed colorwork, tips & tricks. Here it is in action: When working colourwork in this way, you simply pick up the strand thats the correct colour for the next stitch, knit it, and then drop it to pick up the next colour. Sometimes its obvious like in the Boreal Toqueshown below (the gray is the background and the blue creates the pattern in the hat on the left, and the gold creates the pattern and the brown the background color in the hat on the right), but sometimes its arbitrary. Knit outside the lines!AlterKnit Stitch Dictionary takes an unexpected look at stranded colorwork with 200 new motifs. The light grey (103) is the background colour, and the purple (142) is the foreground colour. Finishing Your Project The color below ends up with more yarn than the one thats stranded above, making the stitches in that color larger and causing them to visually pop more than the stitches made with the color thats stranded above. For this tutorial I'm using Rauma 3tr. Yarn bowls and project bags can be handy for this - just use two instead of one! An age-old craft, weaving has recently experienced a comeback in popularity. With both yarns in the left hand, Continental style: 3. After working a few stitches in one colour, simply spread out the stitches of that colour on the right needle so that they arent bunched anymore before working the next stitch in the other colour. Strikkegarn. The design had architectural elements that looked terrible when they were subdued and great when they stood out against the background color. Things to watch out for: maintaining colour dominance. How you carry your colors affects how they appear in your knitting. The Knitting Circle Video Membership, Hi Pat, Identifying and fixing mistakes in lace knitting, Working stranded colourwork over small circumferences, Ladderback Jacquard (a neat way to deal with long floats), Cabling without a cable needle on the wrong side, How to knit cabled decreasesClosed ring cable increases and decreases, How to begin your first large cross stitch project, How to finish a cross stitch project with an embroidery hoop frame, How to darn with Arounna Khounnorag of Bookhou. If you love it whats the problem?And Im just a tad concerned as Im 64 and Ive never heard of the color dominance rules. (Your phone camera probably has a black and white filter option.). Stranded knitting hat pattern - This hat will introduce you to stranded knitting and shaping, a great easy project for advanced beginners. Colour dominance: When you knit a design with two colours you are constantly switching between them and it is really important to be consistent with the order in which you use them. I had looked into it because mine was looking really wonky - turns out I was switching which way I was holding the colors, which, like others have said, is the one thing to watch. To begin, Michele shows a swatch of a two-color checkerboard pattern.