Knitting
Fair Isle vs intarsia: choosing a colorwork method
Stranded knitting carries every color in the row across the back of the work. Intarsia gives each patch of color its own strand of yarn. Which one you want depends on where the colors sit in your design.
Updated October 6, 2026
Two ways to put color in a row
Most colorwork knitting comes down to what you do with the yarn you're not using right now.
In stranded knitting, it travels along the back of the work with you, ready for the next stitch that needs it. In intarsia, it stays where it is. Each area of color has its own strand, and you pick up a different strand when you reach the next area.
It changes how warm the fabric is and whether you can knit it in the round.
Stranded colorwork
In stranded knitting you work with two colors in the same row, usually one in each hand or both over one finger. You knit a few stitches in one color while the other rides along behind them. The loose strand left on the back is called a float.
Where the floats run, the fabric is two layers thick. That makes stranded knitting warm, a little stiffer and less stretchy than plain stockinette, and a favorite for hats, mittens and yoke sweaters. It also means your colorwork gauge can differ from your plain gauge, so swatch in the pattern itself.
Most stranded patterns are knit in the round with no more than two colors in any round. Working in the round means every round is a right-side round, so you're always knitting and always looking at the pattern. Stranded work can be done flat, but purling while managing two strands is more awkward, and many knitters avoid it when they can.
Floats
Floats need watching for two things, length and tension.
A long float snags on fingers, rings and buttons. Most knitters catch any float longer than about 5 to 7 stitches, or about an inch. Catching means trapping the carried yarn behind one stitch of the working color, roughly halfway along, which splits one long float into two short ones.
Floats pulled tight make the fabric pucker and narrow. Before you switch colors, spread the stitches you just knit out along the right needle, so the float that crosses behind them is long enough to lie flat. Floats that are too loose cause their own trouble: they catch on things, and the stitches at either end can sink into the background.
Color dominance
When two strands cross the back, one always travels slightly below the other. The lower one goes a little farther to reach the needle, so its stitches come out slightly bigger and the color stands out more. Pick which color you want to pop (usually the motif color) and keep it in the lower position for the whole project. If you hold one color in each hand, that usually means the left-hand yarn. Changing partway through can make the motif look stronger in some rounds than in others.
What makes it Fair Isle
Fair Isle is a small island in the Shetland Islands, north of mainland Scotland. Fair Isle knitting is a particular tradition of stranded knitting from there, not another name for all stranded knitting, even though it's often used that way. Its traditional features:
- Only two colors in any round.
- Short runs of each color, so floats stay short.
- Motifs such as the OXO and small bands of pattern called peeries.
- Many colors overall, because one or both of the two colors change from band to band. Complex designs can use 10 or more.
- Knit in the round. Cardigans and armholes are handled with steeks, extra stitches that are cut open after knitting.
Plenty of beautiful stranded knitting isn't Fair Isle. Norwegian Selbu mittens and Setesdal sweaters are stranded, and Icelandic lopapeysa yokes are stranded, sometimes with three colors in a round. Calling a snowflake yoke "Fair Isle" isn't a crime, but if you're looking for patterns, "stranded colorwork" is the broader search term.
Intarsia
Intarsia is for blocks of color: a heart on a sweater front, a big letter, a picture panel. Each area of color gets its own length of yarn, wound on a bobbin or into a small hand-wound bundle. Nothing is carried across the back.
When you reach the edge of a color area, you drop the old yarn and bring the new one up from underneath it, so the two strands twist around each other. Do this at every color change on every row. If you skip the twist, the two areas aren't connected and you get a slit or a hole.
Intarsia is worked flat, back and forth. At the end of a row, each block's yarn is hanging at one edge of its block, and the next row goes back the other way, so it's in the right place. In the round you'd arrive at the next round with every strand at the wrong edge of its block. There are workarounds that knit the intarsia section back and forth within a round, but most intarsia patterns are written flat.
The result is a single layer of fabric with the same stretch as plain stockinette. The cost is ends: every block starts and finishes a strand, so a busy picture can leave dozens of tails to weave in. Bobbins also twist around each other every time you turn the work. Many knitters turn clockwise at the end of one row and counterclockwise at the end of the next, which undoes most of the tangle.
Side by side
| Stranded (including Fair Isle) | Intarsia | |
|---|---|---|
| Colors in a row | Usually 2, both carried the full row | One strand for each block of color |
| Back of the work | Floats | Twists at color edges only |
| Fabric | Double where floats run, warmer, less stretch | Single layer |
| Usually knit | In the round | Flat |
| Suits | Small motifs repeating across the row | Large separate shapes |
| Ends to weave in | Mostly where colors change between bands | Two or more for every block |
Which one a design needs
Look at one row of the chart and follow a single color across it.
If each color comes back every few stitches all the way across, it's a stranded design. A band of small diamonds repeating every 6 stitches around a hat is a classic example.
If a color appears in one patch and nowhere else in that row, stranding it would leave a float as long as the gap. Picture a single heart 30 stitches wide in the middle of a 100-stitch sweater front. Stranding the background color behind it would leave floats of up to 30 stitches across the heart. That's an intarsia design.
Some designs mix methods. For a few stitches of detail, like an eye or a highlight, knit the area in the main color and add the detail with duplicate stitch afterward, embroidering over the knit stitches with a tapestry needle.
Charts made from photos are often the hardest case, with five or six colors in a row and no repeat. Neither method loves that. Cut the colors down before you start: the photo to knitting chart converter lets you set a low color count, and the knitting colorwork editor in Craft Studio (free, with an account) lets you clean up stray single stitches by hand.
Mosaic knitting: one color at a time
Mosaic knitting gives you two-color geometric patterns while only ever knitting with one yarn. It's a slip-stitch technique popularized by Barbara G. Walker, whose book Mosaic Knitting (1976) has 380 of her designs.
You work two rows in one color, then two rows in the other. On each pair of rows, some stitches are knit in the working color and others are slipped purlwise, with the yarn held on the wrong side, so the color from the row below shows through. The slipped stitches are what draw the pattern.
It works in garter stitch (squarer, bumpier patterns) or stockinette (curvier lines), flat or in the round. Because you only handle one strand per row, there's no tension juggling and no dominance to manage, which is why many knitters find it an easy way into colorwork. The trade-off is that the patterns are geometric by nature. You won't knit a portrait in mosaic.
Charting your own
Whatever the method, chart on a grid that matches your stitches. Knit stitches are wider than they are tall, so a motif drawn on square paper comes out short and wide. The free knitting graph paper tool sizes the cells to your gauge, and how to read a knitting chart covers reading direction for flat and circular charts.
Frequently asked
- Is Fair Isle the same as stranded knitting?
- Not exactly. Stranded knitting is the general technique of carrying the colors you aren't using across the back of each row. Fair Isle is one traditional style of it from the Shetland Islands, with two colors per round and short runs of each color.
- Can you knit intarsia in the round?
- Not in the usual way. At the end of each round, every color's yarn is at the wrong edge of its block. There are workarounds that knit the intarsia section back and forth, but most intarsia patterns are knit flat.
- How long can a float be in stranded knitting?
- Most knitters catch floats longer than about 5 to 7 stitches, or roughly an inch. Catching the float halfway along splits it into two shorter ones that won't snag.
- Why does my stranded colorwork pucker?
- Usually the floats are too tight. Spread the stitches out along the right needle before you bring the other color across behind them, so each float spans the full width of the stitches.
- What is mosaic knitting?
- A slip-stitch method where you knit two rows in one color, then two in the other, slipping some stitches so the color below shows through. You only use one yarn at a time, and it suits geometric patterns.