Fair Isle (technique)

Fair Isle is a traditional knitting technique used to create patterns with multiple colours. It is named for Fair Isle, a tiny island in the north of Scotland, between the Orkney and Shetland islands. Fair Isle knitting gained a considerable popularity when the Prince of Wales (later to become Edward VIII) wore Fair Isle Tank tops in public. Traditional Fair Isle patterns have a limited palette of five or so colours, use only two colours per row, are worked in the round, and limit the length of a run of any particular colour.

Some people use the term "Fair Isle" to refer to any colourwork knitting where stitches are knit alternately in various colors, with the unused colours stranded across the back of the work. Others use the term "stranded colourwork" for the generic technique, and reserve the term "Fair Isle" for the characteristic patterns of the Shetland Islands.

Other techniques for knitting in colour include intarsia, slip-stitch colour (also known as mosaic knitting).

Technique

Basic two-colour Fair Isle requires no new techniques beyond the basic knit stitch. (The purl stitch is not used.) At each knit stitch, there are two available "active" colours of yarn; one is drawn through to make the knit stitch, and the other is simply held behind the piece, carried as a loose strand of yarn behind the just-made stitch. Knitters who are comfortable with both English style and Continental style knitting can carry one colour with their right hand and one with their left, which is probably easiest, although it is also possible to simply use two different fingers for the two colours of yarn and knit both using the same style.

The simplest Fair Isle pattern is as follows: using circular or double pointed needles, cast on any number of stitches. Then, just keep knitting round and round, always alternating colours every stitch. If you started with an even number of stitches, you will end up with a vertically striped tube of fabric, and if you started with an odd number of stitches, it will be a diagonal grid that appears to mix the two colours.

Traditional Fair Isle patterns normally had no more than two or three consecutive stitches of any given colour, because they were "stranded", and too many consecutive stitches of one colour means a very long strand of the other, quite easy to catch with a finger or button. A more modern variation is "woven" Fair Isle, where the unused strand is held in slightly different positions relative to the needles and thereby woven into the fabric, still invisible from the front, but trapped closely against the back of the piece. This permits a nearly limitless variety of patterns with considerably larger blocks of colour.

Traditional Fair Isle sweater construction usually involves knitting the body of the sweater in the round, sewing or otherwise fastening the work securely where the arm holes are to go, and then cutting the knit fabric to make the armholes. These cuts are known as steeks in American knitting terminology, but not in the Shetland Isles where the Fair Isle technique was developed.

References

* Feitelson, Ann. "The Art of Fair Isle Knitting: History, Technique, Color and Pattern"
* McGregor, Sheila. "Traditional Fair Isle Knitting"
* Starmore, Alice. "Alice Starmore's Book of Fair Isle Knitting"
* Mountford, Debra (Editor). "Aran and Fair Isle Knitting: Patterns, Techniques, and Stitches"
* Bourgeois, Ann and Eugene. "Fair Isle Sweaters Simplified."

External links

* [http://www.shetland-museum.org.uk/collections/textiles/fair_isle_knitting.htm History of Fair Isle knitting]
* [http://www.wendyjohnson.net/fairisle/ The Fearless Fair Isle project]
* [http://www.sheeweknits.com/fair%5Fisle%5F101.htm Fair Isle 101]