Want to add bold, seamless areas of color to your knitting? Intarsia knitting is a colorwork knitting technique for making large, distinct blocks of different colors, and it’s especially easy in garter stitch. Our Intarsia In Garter Stitch Tutorial shows you exactly how to do it!

Intarsia in Garter Stitch | Purl Soho

Unlike Fair Isle knitting (aka stranded colorwork), where the unused yarn is stranded across the back of the work, in intarsia, you use a separate ball (or bobbin) of yarn for each area of color.

The key to successful intarsia? Always cross your yarns when switching colors! Similar to trapping floats for stranded colorwork, this easy step keeps the join between colors super smooth and strong, with no gaps or holes. By always working the cross on the wrong side of the work, you can ensure that the right side of your work looks neat and tidy. We’ll show you how it’s done below, and then you’ll be ready to try knitting intarsia in garter stitch!

Intarsia In Garter Stitch: Video Tutorial

Click To See Video Transcript

Hi, this is Whitney from Purl Soho. I’m going to demonstrate how to knit intarsia in garter stitch. Intarsia is a simple colorwork technique where you switch colors mid-row. Unlike stranded colorwork where you carry both colors along the entire row, for intarsia you pick up a new ball of yarn every time you change colors. The only trick here is to prevent holes in your knitting where you change the colors, and that’s really easy to do in garter stitch.

So this swatch of our Color Study Blanket pattern is a great place to learn the basics. I’m going to show you how to change colors on both the right and wrong sides of the work, and you’ll be ready to try it when we’re done.

We’re here on the right side of the work, and I am finishing up with the first color, knitting up to the point where we change colors. Now if I just dropped this yarn and started with the new color, we’d have a big gap in our knitting. So all you do to prevent that is you take the color you’ve been knitting with, and you cross it over the new color at the back side of your work like that. Now you pick up your new color and you knit the next stitch. That’s it actually. That’s all there is to it.

You can see here on the back side that we’ve tacked the old color down and they’ve kind of twisted around each other and made it so that this seam is nice and tidy and there are no gaps in the knitting. So then you just continue on and I will show you next how to do something similar on the wrong side of the work.

When you’re knitting a wrongside row you’ll do the same thing except you’ll do it at the front of the work instead of the back. So you knit up to the color change, and then you’re going to cross the old color over the new color, but instead of doing it at the back, you bring the color you’ve been using to the front of your work into the purl position and cross it over the color you’re about to knit with. Then pick up this color and then bring it to the back of your work since you need to knit the next stitch and knit that stitch as usual.

So again you have trapped the old color with the new color; you’ve bridged the two colors and you can see here on the back side of the work that you have this really tidy seam. And again, on the front side, you have really smooth transitions between the colors and no gaps at all, and it was super easy to do.

That is all there is to it…Knitting Intarsia in garter stitch!

Intarsia In Garter Stitch: Step-By-Step Instructions

Prefer still photos and text? Follow along here!

To work intarsia in garter stitch on the right side…

Intarsia in Garter Stitch | Purl Soho

Knit up to the point where you need to change colors, then cross the old yarn (the pink yarn, above) over the new yarn (white)…

Intarsia in Garter Stitch | Purl Soho

… and knit the next stitch with the new yarn. It’s that easy!

To work intarsia in garter stitch on the wrong side…

Intarsia in Garter Stitch | Purl Soho

Knit up to the point where you need to change colors…

Intarsia in Garter Stitch | Purl Soho

… then bring the old yarn (the white yarn, above) to the front purl position and cross it over the new yarn (pink).

Intarsia in Garter Stitch | Purl Soho

Bring the new yarn to the back knit position and use it to continue knitting.

Intarsia in Garter Stitch | Purl Soho

And that’s it… Here’s how it looks from the right side. You can see that the join is very neat, with the two colors smoothly transitioning from one to the other.

Intarsia in Garter Stitch | Purl Soho

Our free Color Study Blanket pattern in Daily Wool

Start your first intarsia garter stitch project today… Get our free Color Study Blanket pattern and pick up some Daily Wool yarn to knit it! This plump, soft, machine washable wool yarn is such a great pick for knitting blankets, and you have so many beautiful palettes to choose from with our Color Study Blanket Bundles.

P.S. For tips on working intarsia in stockinette stitch, please visit our original Intarsia Tutorial.

Looking for more inspiration? Explore all of our free knitting patterns and knitting tutorials, buy one of our many knitting kits and yarn bundles, and shop for beautiful yarn. We have over 35 gorgeous natural fiber yarns in 100’s of magnificent colors, designed to bring integrity, beauty, and joy to your next knitting project and only available at Purl Soho!