Lesson 9: Seeing Double

The duplicate stitch. So useful, so helpful, so easy! Yes this lesson is about the duplicate stitch: what it's for and how to do it. Looking at pictures of the stitch it looks a little difficult, but it is actually pretty easy!

The duplicate stitch is used for adding patterns and designs to your knitting, much like fair isle, but this stich is better for using many colors and if the design is spread out. It is also useful when you want to put a motif on a knitted piece but you're not sure where exactly. You can just put it on after you have finished knitting!

Step one is o cut a piece of yarn in your desired color. Usually I cut the yarn about 3 feet long or a little shorter when I know that I am going to need multiple long strands to fill the entire space that I want to fill, but if you know that you don't need that much you can just cut less. I use a plastic yarn needle with a fairly large eye because those are comfortable for me to use, but use whichever type you prefer.

Step two is to figure out where the yarn needs to go on the knitting. It is best to start at the bottom of the design on either the left or right side, it doesn't matter in this case.



Step three: poke the needle from the bottom of the knitted fabric at the bottom of the stitch that needs to be covered with yarn. In the picture, if I wanted to cover the blue stitch with yarn, I would poke the needle up through the red dot. Pull the yarn through the fabric until you have about 2 inches on the underside. Hold that piece for a few stitches until it is secure.

Step four is poke the needle down through the top corner of the stitch (if you are starting from the left side of the design, poke the needle down through the left corner. If you start from the right side of the design poke the needle in the right side of the stitch). Then, poke it back up through the other side of the stitch and pull the yarn through until it is snug but not tight.
In the picture to start from the right side of the design, poke the needle down through the blue dot and up from the red dot (it's the opposite for starting from the left)
The key is to bring the yarn under the purple stitch



Step five is to poke the needle back down through the bottom of the stitch in the same place where you started with it. Then repeat steps two through five for the rest of the stitches. To finish off the yarn secure it by pulling it through a few stitches on the back of the work, but make sure you can't see the yarn on the front of the work where it shouldn't be seen.

And that's all there is to it! For many of the fair isle charts that I have put on the site it may be easier to use the duplicate stitch for them rather than fair isle because of the intricacy and use of multiple colors in a row.