How to knit designs on wool

Hello knitters!

Today we are going to learn how to knit shapes and designs on wool.

Shapes and designs and are very nice to knit. The official knitting technique is called intarsia. You can always change the color of the thread and chose your figures and shapes.

Please don’t mix intarsia with jacquard due that it’s not the same technique. When knitting shapes and designs you always have to change the threads when changing colors on your item/garment. The part from behind will always end up clean and without remaining threads.

The intarsia technique is the one that allows more shapes and imagination when knitting your favorite projects and garments. You can create ‘drawings’ on all your WAK projects.

In order to start intarsia, we recommend drawing the desired shape on a piece of paper, so that the idea of “when to change thread colors” is pretty much clear.

After having a clear idea, you’ll only need to take care where you need to make the change.

1. Knit as usual following your pattern or previous technique until the first row where you would like to change the thread.

2. Fuse a new colored thread with the main thread and continue knitting with your new thread.

3. Fuse again another thread but this time, the thread has to have the same color as the original one. Continue knitting with thread number #3 until you finish the stitches.

Now you will have 3 different threads.

4. On the opposite row and on all even rows, you need to pay attention to the rear threads if you don’t want to have holes. When reaching the ‘point’ where you need to change color, take the threads on the opposite side as shown on the pic. You will check that the main thread stays under the second thread. Stretch the threads and continue knitting as usual.

Now you already know how to knit ‘drawings and shapes’ and make a color change. Keep in mind that the more threads you add the more difficult the technique is going to be.