Knitting with Color - And Sampling New Colors with Duplicate Stitch

July 29th, 2008 in patterns & designs, knitting

Daphne Adair, contributor

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Florence yarn colors: pink (of course) plus pale lemon, olive, grape, and raspberry.

Step 1: Put the needle in at the bottom of the first stitch to be duplicated.

Step 2: Go up and under the existing stitch above.

Florence yarn colors: pink (of course) plus pale lemon, olive, grape, and raspberry.

Photo: Daphne Adair

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Once upon a time, I set out to knit Sarah Dallas’ "Florence" design, from Rowan magazine number 35. Most of us aren’t super into nearly neon yellow cardis (the original model color), and I happen to be into pink cardis (and pink everything else), so of course the first thing I did was completely change the color scheme. I picked the main pink color and, after laying out every single other color of Rowan Cotton Glace on the shop table and getting about six different opinions on colors, finally selected pale lemon, olive, grape, and raspberry.

But how was I going to combine them? I thought and thought, and knitted a swatch, but I wasn’t quite satisfied. I brought it to Hilltop Yarn, where a very smart knitting instructor suggested that instead of reknitting the swatch (which I was not motivated to do), I could duplicate stitch new colors on top of the originals.

Here’s how it works. Duplicate stitch, or Swiss darning, is where you trace the shape of your knitted stiches with a strand of yarn and a blunt-tipped yarn needle. It’s easiest, and generally used to best effect, on stockinette stitch.

Here’s a swatch using Blue Sky cotton showing how to duplicate-stitch:

Step 1: Put the needle in at the bottom of the first stitch to be duplicated.

I begin at the bottom of a stitch and leave a long tail on top of the knitting, which I’ll weave in later.

Step 2: Go up and under the existing stitch above.

Follow the path of the existing stitch with your yarn—go up and under the legs of the stitch above.

Step 3: Bring the yarn down to the bottom of the stitch you're tracing.

Take the yarn back down to the bottom leg of the stitch you’re tracing and you’re back at step 1, ready to work the next stitch to the left.

Duplicate stitch can be used to embroider a design on a garment, weave in ends, or as mentioned, try a new color scheme without reknitting a whole fair isle swatch. I no longer have my original swatch for Florence, but I’ve duplicate-stitched a little bit of the hem to show how another color scheme would look:

Here, I've traced over the original raspberry with the pale lemon.

Here, I've traced over the original raspberry with the pale lemon.

Now I've traced over the original grape with olive, and over the original olive with grape.

Compared with the original, I think the background stands out too much and the Xs and Os are hard to read. However, I could've tried swapping out the lemon and olive, or the grape and raspberry, and ended up with a still different and interesting garment. It's fun to test out different colors with this technique.

As you can see, I'm pretty happy with the final product: