Intarsia

We are frequently asked how we got started. While I'd love to share a story about a childhood dream of running a yarn shop that came true through careful planning and a solid business plan, that would be more of a fairy tale than my actual story.

The reality is, I was raised immersed in both the hobby and business aspects of needlework, with memories of assisting my mother since the mid-1970s. My mom was talented in all forms of needlework and even owned her own shop before we moved from Lawton. The only memento I have from her shop is a brisket recipe written on a piece of notepaper with the store's logo, as she never took any pictures of the shop, leaving me with only my memories.

When I tagged along to work with my mom, I often got bored and decided to tackle various needlework projects. I experimented with embroidery, sewing, cross-stitch, needlepoint, crocheting, and knitting. I once knit one very ugly house shoe using a blue variegated yarn. It turned out way too big, so I moved on to my next project.

In the early 1990s, my mom moved away from her intense hand quilting phase, turned off by the rise of machine quilting. Quick and easy was never her style.

Fortunately for everyone, she returned to knitting, a craft she had learned in her early teens from a neighbor named Kristine. Her first project was a stuffed monkey, followed by a sweater for her younger brother. Kristine, who was German, was serious about knitting. Mom always claimed that knitting was the one hobby she continually revisited because it never bored her and always presented new challenges.

Like many mothers, she enjoyed knitting for me. I was young and fashion-conscious, working at Ballet’s while completing my accounting degree. She took me to a yarn shop to select a project, but everything had an old-lady vibe. I pleaded with her to buy me a store-bought sweater instead.

Undeterred, she asked what kind of sweater I envisioned. Berek picture sweaters were highly popular back then, and I purchased a Berek baseball design while working at Ballet’s, spending almost an entire month's pay! These sweaters were hand-knit back then, and the quality left much to be desired. Mom was mortified whenever I wore it, worried that others might think SHE had made it. The yarn was awful too; the colors ran badly, nearly ruining the sweater after the first hand wash.

This experience inspired my mom to design picture sweaters for me. She could design the sweater shape, but the motifs were a different story. That is where I entered the picture. Realizing I had a knack for combining small rectangles to form pictures, we quickly decided to start a pattern design company specializing in intarsia designs, as there was nothing readily available on the market at that time.

Mom, known for her perfectionism, understood that for our designs to thrive, we needed to educate the world on how to properly execute intarsia. She exhausted every available resource in her pursuit of achieving perfect stitches with this colorwork technique, free from distortion, puckering, holes, and other unsightly effects. She came up empty-handed and decided to tackle these issues herself.

After perfecting her techniques, many of which she innovated herself, we compiled her teachings into this little publication. It was groundbreaking; numerous prominent designers and educators have acknowledged her techniques in their own work. I can confidently claim that her methods produce results that are clearly superior to any alternatives.

Our Intarsia book is designed as a comprehensive teaching guide, featuring a sampler to accompany the instructions and facilitate your learning of the techniques. We now offer in-store and home learning classes that explore the basic and intermediate techniques outlined in the book, complete with instructional videos.

Let me introduce you to two of Mom's more innovative techniques:

The first technique involves adding a beginning tail on the right side of the knitting. In the case of intarsia, the yarns are connected at color changes through an interlock, twisting the two yarns together to link the stitches. The beginning tail won't be secured if you start knitting with a new yarn without this interlock. You would either need to catch it in the interlock on the next row or pull it through when working in the tail. This can be tricky to remember, and forgetting can lead to distortion or even a small hole. Mom devised a more effective method by introducing the yarn with the tail on the right side, ensuring it gets caught in the interlock as it’s added. This approach is much simpler! By positioning the beginning tail to the right side, prevents accidentally picking up and knitting with the tail. In intarsia, most of the action occurs on the wrong side, so keeping the tails out of the way significantly simplifies the process. Additionally, she would also flip the ending tails to the right side to keep them out of the way, although this action serves no other purpose.

Dealing with all of the ends is arguably the most difficult aspect of intarsia knitting, and how they are finished is crucial to the end result. We work our tails diagonally across the knitted fabric, splitting through the yarn's plies. Start by splitting through a few stitches in one direction, then return in the opposite direction along a diagonal line, just next to where you previously worked.

I won't dive into the specifics of tail directionality for intarsia, as it's a complex topic, but this method is fantastic for most knitting projects. The tail won't be visible from the front, even if it's a significantly different color than the rest of the knitting. If it does show through, it means you've either veered off the diagonal or pushed too deeply into the plies; just a few plies are all that's needed. I assure you, the tails will remain secure. By working diagonally, the natural flexibility of the fabric is preserved. For intricate designs, like our 12 Days of Christmas sweater, you can layer tails on top of one another, and from the front, it will appear perfectly neat, hiding the hot mess happening inside.

Mastering intarsia knitting can elevate your skills across all knitting techniques. It challenges you to truly understand the structure of knitting, offering a refreshing perspective. The knowledge gained is invaluable even if creating motifs and picture patterns isn't for you.