Fair Isle

Fair Isle is a knitting style used to create patterns with multiple colours. It is traditionally a hand knitting technique but can be done using a knitting machine as well. Though colloquially this technique is known as 'FairIsle', technically it is called 'stranded knitting' with 'Fair Isle' being a specific type from Fair Isle, one of the Shetland Islands.

For each stitch, there are two available colours of yarn; one is drawn through to make the stitch, and the other is help behind the piece, creating a 'float'. Traditionaly, these patterns had no more than 3 consecutive stitches of any colour to avoid long floats that can catch easily. On the below image you can see how the floats are formed by the colour not knit into the front side.

To create Fair Isle patterns on our knitting machine, we can use DesignaKnit. These patterns are limited to 2 colours per row. Below are more examples of Fair Isle patterns made using DesignaKnit.