How to Use a Color Chart for a Hat Pattern in Knitting
Fair Isle is a knitting pattern style where the knitted garment has various color designs woven into the fabric of the knitting. Making a pattern like this usually requires the knitter to follow a color chart, where the knitted design is patterned out on paper. If you need to know how to use a color chart for a hat pattern in knitting, think of the chart as a blueprint for your knitting. You will need a solid understanding of knit stitches and knitting in the round to follow a color chart for a hat pattern.
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Instructions
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Cast on the required number of stitches for the hat in the base color for the hat pattern. In Fair Isle knitting, there is usually one main color with splashes or small sections of other colors worked in.
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Read the chart from right to left for each round. Since you are making a hat, you will work each round from the right instead of turning to work left to right on the wrong sides. Additionally, you will work the chart from the bottom to the top. This means that you will start the hat by reading the bottom right corner of the chart, and finish in the top left corner.
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When you read the chart, consider that each square on the chart represents one knit stitch. When you come to a square that is in a contrasting color, pick up a strand of yarn in that color, and knit the next stitch with that color. Twist the tail of the new yarn two times around the working strand of the main color yarn to secure them together.
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When the chart returns to the main color or a new color, drop the current color you are holding, and pick up a new one. Carry the strands of all the colors inside the hat as you work, lifting the ones you need when you need them. Keep the strands a little bit loose as you carry them behind your work so that they will stretch with the hat when the recipient wears it.
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When you reach the end of a row, move up to the stitch on the far right side of the following row and continue to read the chart. When you bind off the hat, weave in any loose ends of the color strands with a large-eye blunt needle, being careful not to let the various colors show through on the front of the hat as you do so.
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Tips & Warnings
If you have several colors to work with, it helps to wind them all into small balls to work with instead of keeping them in larger skeins. This makes them easier to unwind if they become tangled together. Some knitters even put each ball underneath a plant pot that has been turned upside down, pulling the strand of yarn through the hole in the pot and securing the ball under the pot so that it will not roll away or get too tangled.
References
- Photo Credit knitting image by Inger Anne Hulbækdal from Fotolia.com
