Sometimes you find a pattern you just have to make, find the yarn and then realise you just won’t have enough to complete the project, or maybe you want to personalise the pattern a little. What can you do?
Firstly check the yarns you are using are all the same type and thickness. If using cotton or wool, it may be expedient to do a test at this point to see if the dyes are colourfast. Simply snip a small length of each yarn and wet with hot water, place on a piece of kitchen towel or facial tissue and see if the colour bleeds from the yarn into the paper. If it does, you may need to have a rethink on your colour scheme.
1. Work the ribbing in different colours
Take a pattern for a plain garment and simply work ribbing at cuffs or armhole, neck and waist in a contrast colour.
Ruffles and belts may also be worked in contrast colours as shown below:
2. Work stripes
You can work these in two or more colours to radically change a plain pattern:
3. Work blocks of colour
Large areas of colour may be worked to give variations within a garment. This will not require any extra stitches to be added to the garment, but you will need to twist yarns at every colour change, so gaps do not appear in the work.
