Why Fair Isle ? – Fair Isle, is a small island (three square miles) in the north of Scotland, and is the tenth largest of The Shetland islands. Fair Isle still derives a large part of her revenue from the production of this famous knitwear.
Fair Isle knitting is a traditional technique used to create multiple colour patterns. The style of knitting is named after a small island in the north of Scotland, which forms part of Shetland Islands. The style first became in trend in 1921 when the Prince of Wales at that era wore Fair Isle tank tops in public, establishing popularity for the knitting technique. A traditional fair isle pattern consist of around five colours, two colours per row, are worked in the round, and limit the length of a run of any particular colour.
Fair Isle knitting is often referred to as colour work stitches knitted alternately in various colours, with the unused colours being stranded across the back of the work.
Technique
A basic two-colour Fair Isle is just simply the basic knit stitch technique, there are two available active colours of yarn at each knit stitch, one is to be drawn through to make the knit stitch, and the other is simply held behind the piece and carried as a loose strand of yarn behind the stitch just made.
The simplest Fair Isle pattern technique is as follows; cast on any number of stitches using circular or double pointed needles. If when you started you used an even amount of numbers, the pattern will end up with a vertically striped tube of fabric, if you used an odd number of stitches the pattern will be a diagonal grid that appears to mix the two colours.
A modern variety of Fair Isle is now woven fabric; this allows a wide variety of patterns with greater blocks of colours. This technique is to hold the unused strand in slightly different positions relative to the needles and thereby woven into the fabric, making it invisible from the front, but trapped closely against the back of the piece.
Examples
