[tutorial] Slipped Stitch Colorwork

Why would you want to work slipped stitch colorwork?

• By slipping the stitches it allows the yarn color from the previous row to appear without you having to carry the yarn across your row.
• Often used in Mosaic style colorwork.
• The slip stitches create the colorwork design.
• If you use a lot of slipped stitch rows (regardless of whether they’re 2-color of just 1), the row gauge will be compressed. This means your row gauge will go from, say, 24 rows per 4 inches to 28 rows per 4 inches. It’s not good or bad, just something to keep in mind – particularly when your work is sensitive to row gauge.

As always, follow the instructions contained in your pattern.

For our purposes, we’ll assume you’re working back and forth in stockinette stitch.

Knit Rows

You can start working slipped stitch colorwork on any row.

In this example, we’ve joined a new color and we’ve worked a row of K1, sl1.

Just remember that all slipped stitches are slipped purlwise. Take care to keep the yarn loose to prevent puckering.

The old color will be raised a bit more.

This is because the new color is behind those stitches.

Note that it does look similar to stranded colorwork on both the front and back. But it’s definitely different because the color that’s slipped isn’t actually worked on those rows at all.

But keep this technique in mind for simple colorwork because it can be a nice alternative to stranded colorwork!