How to Read Mosaic Knitting Patterns

Introduction to Mosaic Knitting

Mosaic Knitting, also known as Slip-Stitch Colorwork, is an easy way to create beautiful two-color patterns while knitting.

To understand Mosaic Knitting, think like an artist for a bit.  Picture a series of adjacent stripes in two colors – let’s use black and white for the purposes of this explanation.  Now, paint narrow white bridges crossing from one white stripe to an adjacent white stripe, over the black stripe.  Paint a few narrow white bridges.  Now, paint some narrow black bridges, crossing from one black stripe to an adjacent one, over a white stripe.  Just do not have a white bridge connecting to a black bridge.

What does this mean to a knitter?

The stripes are actually two rows of white alternating with two rows of black.  They could be worked using Stocking Stitch (alternating K 1 row and P 1 row) or Garter Stitch (K every row).

And the bridges are Slip Stitches.

This photo shows a two-stitch-wide white bridges over a black stripe.

Example of Mosaic Knitting with Slip Stitches

To explain this further, let’s pretend that you just have one white bridge between two white stripes, over a black stripe (a 6-row sample).

Work two rows in white (the first row is a Right Side row).  Now, start to work the third row in black.  When you come to where the bridge should be, Slip 1 stitch purlwise with the yarn in the back of the needles.  Then work the rest of the row.  On your needle will be one single white stitch, with all of the rest in black.  That white stitch is the slipped stitch.

Now, you have to work the second row of black (or Row 4).  There are two rules for the second row of a stripe:

• If the stitch on the old needle is the same color as the yarn (in this case black), knit or purl it, depending on what the pattern says.
• If the stitch on the old needle is the other color, Slip it purlwise with the yarn in the front of the knitted fabric (facing you).

At the end of the second row of black, your needle will still just have one single white stitch (the stitch that has been slipped twice), with all of the rest in black.

Now, work two rows of white.  On the first of these two rows (Row 5 of the sample), when you get to the stitch that was slipped, knit into that stitch as though it were not special at all.  The slipped stitch has stretched vertically quite a bit since it was first created in Row 2.  The slipped stitch has now formed a bridge between the two white stripes over the black stripe.  And remember, even though the bridge is white, it was actually formed while making a black stripe.  I like to think of the black stripe as pulling up a bridge stitch from the previous white stripe.

But in Real Life...

Of course, most Mosaic Knitting patterns are much more complex than the little 6-row sample that I just described.  For example, on the second stripe (the black one), there would be many Slip-Stitch bridges formed.  And then the third stripe would both finish the Slip-Stitch bridges by knitting into them, but would also pull up other stitches from the black stripe, to form some black bridges over the new white stripe.

To help you read the knitting pattern for Mosaic Knitting, here is an example that shows what has been described above:

• Row 1 (RS): With B, k1, *(sl 1 wyib, k1) twice, sl 1 wyib, k2, (sl 1 wyib, k1) 2 times; rep from * across.
• Row 2 and all WS rows: With same color used on previous row, p the knit sts of previous row, sl wyif the sl sts of previous row.

And that’s all that you need to know to get started with read a knitting pattern for Mosaic Knitting.

For more information, examples, and patterns, see the Read Knitting Patterns website.