Intarsia Tutorial

Hi All Knit Up Designs Fan! 

I have a couple of designs out that use intarsia (Color Pop Beanie and Liberty Tides) and I thought I would provide a simple tutorial for the knitters who haven't knit intarsia before or need a refresher. First, lets discuss intarsia. 

Intarsia is a color work technique that consists of interlocking two colors together when you are changing colors within one row. Different from faire isle where the knitter uses two or more colors across the whole row, intarsia in done in smaller sections and colors are not worked all the way across. Take a look at the photos below for the intarsia sections. 

This is the Color Pop Beanie and it has an intarsia insert. The knitter doesn't carry the contrast color across the whole row, only over a small section of stitches. 

For Liberty Tides, the cable is intarsia. The edging is knit at the same time as the shawl and the knitter interlocks the main color and contrast color together at the edge. 

Intarsia can be very simple or very different depending on how many sections of intarsia are in the piece. Usually each colors section has its own bobbin of yarn that the knitter uses. Neither of these pattern is a different intarsia pattern, Color Pop was my first intarsia project ever and Liberty Tides my second. 

Below is the simple photo tutorial on how to interlock your colors together for intarsia! 

Start of interlock section (Knit to the interlock)

Cross the contrast yarn on top of the main color yarn. (White over Blue)

Cross the main color over the contrast color one more time (Blue over White, so the colors are 'interlocked') and then proceed to knit across with main color.

Backside of the intarsia piece and interlocked section

There you are! A simple photo tutorial on how to interlock the yarns together for intarsia. Essentially the yarns are wrapped around each other so there isn't a gap between the two different sides of the piece. Incorrectly wrapped intarsia will have a whole between the two sides. Both of my designs use an intarsia edging, not intarsia in the middle of a piece and I included this video to the pattern as well, this is not my video but linked form YouTube. 

Can't wait to see your first intarsia project! Happy Knitting! 

Sierra