Knitting Colorwork Tips & Tricks

Knitting colorwork is more than just choosing a color that’s specific to the gender or preference of the recipient. Colorwork refers to knitting with more than one color. This is by no means an easy feat. You first want to understand how to select the color and pattern for your skill level. You also want to make sure you know the answer to questions like how do you hold yarn for colorwork. These colorwork knitting tips will help you, whether you’re a beginner or an advanced knitter.  

Selecting a Pattern

You want to choose a pattern that you like as well as one that’s in your skill level. If you have too complicated of a pattern, it may not look like how it should. 

Choose Colors That Complement 

Generally, you want to start out by choosing patterns with only two colors and gradually increase the color scheme difficulty as you improve as a knitter. 

As one of the most important colorwork knitting tips, you want to make sure you have a color wheel. You may have used one of these in school in art class, and it didn’t seem to have much value to you at that point. However, when it comes to choosing colors to knit with, you’ll reap the reward of choosing colors from the wheel. If you don’t want to purchase one, you can find them online. 

Color theory is quite extensive, so we’ll just discuss the basics at the moment. When it comes to colors, opposites attract. Therefore, you can easily create a color palette by choosing colors that are on the opposite side of the color wheel from one another. Opposites attract in color theory! 

You could choose an analogous color scheme. This occurs when you choose colors that are beside one another, rather than opposite of one another. 

Color theory is a bit more complex when you’re choosing more than two colors because you can choose color patterns in triads as well as split-complementary patterns. Triads are when you choose colors that are evenly spaced out on the wheel. You can use them in groups of three. However, if you need to choose more than three, you can use this concept as well. Split-complementary colors are when you choose a color and look at the other side of the wheel. Rather than selecting the color that’s immediate across from that color, you choose the colors that are beside the one that’s immediately across from the original color.

Keep in mind that black and white aren’t on a color wheel, so the color wheel can’t help you. This may require you to place the black and white beside the other color or colors you choose and decide which one looks most visually appealing. 

Needle Techniques 

We could talk all day about how to choose colors for your project. However, without the proper technique, the color doesn’t matter. 

Before you learn how do you hold yarn for colorwork, you should first learn how to choose the right needle. Typically, you want to choose needles that are one to two sizes larger than you would normally use. This makes the process easier.

When you want to know how do you hold yarn for colorwork, you should understand that there are different techniques. You may need to experiment to find which one works best for you. One option is to string both colors over one finger and choose the color you want as you go along. The ball of yarn may rest beside you or on the ground. It’ll move as you continue to use the different colors. 

Try a yarn guide. If the technique mentioned above is causing your yarn to tangle and leading to frustration, you could use a yarn guide, which fits over your finger. It helps to keep the yarn separate from one another. 

On the other hand, you could choose to knit with the colors on opposite hands. You place the colors on the same finger of both hands and work from there. 

There’s also the option of placing the different colors on different fingers of the same hand. This tends to work best for experienced knitters. 

These are basic techniques you can use when you’re learning colorwork. As you progress, these colorwork knitting tips are still relevant, but you may learn techniques that work best for you, both in terms of your frustration level and to enhance the finished product. You may also change the size of your needles as you advance.