Embellish Your Knits: Duplicate Stitch

There are many ways to embellish and embroider your knits. Duplicate stitch is a popular technique to make designs in your knitting projects and in this video Mary Beth Temple shares duplicate stitch basics.

Duplicate stitch can be used to:

• – Create designs and add embellishments to your knitting
• – Fix a mistake in a colorwork project
• – Monogram a project
• – Changing only a few stitches to a different color in intarsia projects

To work the duplicate stitch, Mary Beth uses a yarn that is the same weight as the yarn used for project. Leaving a 4 – 6” tail to weave in, works a duplicate stitch using a blunt end tapestry needle as follows:

• 1. Bring yarn up through the center of the stitch below the stitch being duplicated.
• 2. Go under both bars of the “V” of the stitch above the stitch that is being duplicated.
• 3. Go back down through the space the yarn came out of in Step 1.

These steps are repeated on all the stitches that Mary Beth wants to change. She is careful to keep the tension the same as the project. She doesn’t pull to tightly or leave the stitch too loose. She also shows the back of the work and notes that the yarn is neatly in place on the Wrong Side of the fabric.