About

Cost: $ $ $ $ $

Difficulty: • • • • •

Time: 1h00

Add fun hand-stitched elements to knitted sweaters
Have you ever tried the duplicate stitch? This is a stitch that essentially duplicates the knitted stitches in a piece of knitwear, giving you the look of knitted color work. The stitch is easy to learn but can give you lots of creative options.

Posted by Bee's Knees Industries • Published 2nd March 2015

Print • Embed

Chudames favorited Duplicate Stitch 28 Jul 17:12
Kim M. favorited Duplicate Stitch 08 Jun 04:12
Kim M. commented on Duplicate Stitch 08 Jun 04:12
Katrina P. favorited Duplicate Stitch 28 Apr 13:26
Kmila R. favorited Duplicate Stitch 01 Apr 03:11
WerewolfCas favorited Duplicate Stitch 29 Mar 09:48
Suzi T. favorited Duplicate Stitch 09 Mar 21:35
Alice N. added Duplicate Stitch to Technique 07 Mar 12:24
Julia favorited Duplicate Stitch 05 Mar 19:16
ale_corason favorited Duplicate Stitch 04 Mar 08:16

Step 1
Start with a piece of knitwear that has a relatively chunky knit. The stitch works best on stockinette stitch fabric, which looks like many rows of "V"s, so make sure your chosen fabric has enough of that stockinette stitch for you to create your design.

Choose a yarn in whatever color or weight you'd like to work with. When choosing a yarn weight, keep in mind these two elements:
• One, a yarn in a lighter weight than the yarn your knitwear is made of (like the pink yarn shown) may not entirely cover the existing stitches, meaning that your background fabric will peek through your stitches.
• Two, a yarn in a heavier weight than the original fabric (like the brown yarn shown) will cause your design to be very bulky.

Both of those options will work just fine, but you may want to experiment to make sure you like the look of the yarn you choose.
Step 2
To start the stitch, bring your darning needle up through the base of the first "V" you want to stitch.
Step 3
Pass the needle through the back of the stitch you are covering.
Step 4
Bring your needle back through your original entry point at the base of the "V."
Step 5
And that's the completed stitch! Just keep working that stitch to finish your design.
Step 6
A few tips:

To maintain the stretchiness of the original fabric, try to work your stitches in horizontal rows and don't carry your yarn over more than a couple of stitches. Start and stop your working yarn if you need to skip a large area.

Be mindful of the tension of your stitches. You want the tension to match the fabric you are knitting.

To make it easier to follow your design, I recommend marking the stitches you will duplicate using an erasable fabric marker. I wasn't quite able to both focus on the stitch and keep my design in mind, so I found this to be very helpful.