Day 12: Dishcloth Design – Colorwork
Pardon the colors here, I am trying to use up scraps! Here is an example of how to use color on a dishcloth or afghan square. The particular method of changing colors I used is called intarsia, which is a method using bobbins. There are three different ways to do colorwork: intarsia, fair isle (tapestry), and carry along.
Intarsia: With this method you make bobbins for the number of times you will change color so that each section of color has its own bobbin. In the example above, I had three bobbins. There were two bobbins of the variegated blue/pink and one bobbin of yellow. Each time I needed to change colors, I just picked up the new color where it was left off. You need two bobbins of the surrounding color because on a row, the yellow separates the two sections of variegated color.
Fair Isle/Tapestry: Fair Isle is really a knitting term, but you can use the same technique with crochet. In this method you do not use bobbins. Instead, you carry the color you are not using along in your work. For crochet, you lay the unused yarn on top of the stitches and crochet over them with the working yarn. I find this method difficult to master. It is hard to completely hide the unused yarn and if you pull the yarn too tight, the work bunches up.
Carry along method: Not sure if this has a real name. In this method, you do not crochet over the unused yarn. Instead you leave it hanging, but crochet over it every few stitches to carry it along. This will leave loops along the back of the unused color and therefore this method is not reversible.
I have probably done a very bad job explaining these methods! I encourage you to try some colorwork though because it’s really not as complicated as it sounds.
Here is another dishcloth/afghan block I made a few months ago; it was a bit more complicated! It involved three bobbins of white, three bobbins of red, and two bobbins of blue.
Lou's Handiwork 