Knitting Tricks: Charting a Color Pattern

I am an avid and primarily self taught knitter. I learned most of the techniques I know by trial and error as I worked a pattern that was probably too advanced for me at the time. Collecting these tricks and techniques into one place is hopefully as helpful to others as it is to me.

There are a multitude of charted patterns for multicolor knitting available on the internet. Chances are you can find one already made for just about anything you want to knit up. But what do you do when you can't find just the motif you need?  Fortunately, making your own color chart from a printed design is pretty easy.

This is a page from a book filled with Japanese border designs. For this particular knitting project I chose the one in the middle.  I scanned the book page and used my tablet as a way to enlarge the design to the size I wanted and traced it onto graph paper. You can pretty easily just skip the tablet step and draw the design directly to the graph paper if it's a simple enough pattern. Or if you need it resized you can photograph or scan the book page and use a computer to enlarge and print it out.  Either way, the next step is to get the design drawn onto graph paper.

If you have a repeating pattern like this, all you need is one repeat. If you're having trouble figuring out just how much is one repeat, try using tracing paper to put sections of the motif next to each other to see how they line up.

The top motif is the one I traced. I did a bit of cleaning of up of the design to make sure it was symmetrical and balanced.  Then I sketched in extra grid lines along the lines of the motif. You'll note since it is symmetrical I only needed to do one half.  The bottom is my draft chart. Using those extra sketched in grid lines, I filled in the graph squares whererever a line of the motif crossed the grid. There are visible marks from an eraser as I made adjustments.  You'll need to step back and look at your draft, make sure the lines look like curves where they are supposed to, and are straight where they need to be.  Double check that both haves of a symmetrical design are the same, that a repeating design matches itself on the edges.

Once you have a draft on paper, I find it very helpful to make a digital version. Using any spreadsheet program you can recreate your paper chart by filling in the cells with different colors.  This will help you count how many stitches and rows your chart is, and you can copy and paste the chart beside and below itself to check if it all lines up when you repeat it.  From here you can also print more copies if you need.

And that's pretty much it. Whatever project your chart is for, just knit it up following the chart and you should see your motif taking shape. I used a variegated yarn for my main color, so it has that stained glass look, but it works just as well with a solid color. 

If you'd like to make one of these neck warmers yourself you can find the pattern here or here :)