I am back to doing samples of different techniques for my City and Guilds course. The homework for February’s class was on double knitting, where you are creating a double layer fabric.

This is plain double knitting, where you end up knitting a tube with stocking stitch on each side.

Next I had a go with knit and purl patterns, these both look the same on each side. Unfortunately my yarn choice was rather poor and the grey sample doesn’t really show up the pattern very well.

The blue is actually slightly better in real life, but being rather shiny cotton didn’t photograph very well.

Next I had a go at a combination of double knitting and garter stitch. This is another sample which looks the same from both sides. I think this would make great table mats. It is a very pleasing pattern to knit too.

Then the last sample of double knitting was using two colours. With this method one side is the inverse of the other colourwise. A wonderful effect, although hard to keep track of what you are doing! I really loved how this one came out, very stained glass looking.

And this is the other side. Not quite as good since it turned out that the multicoloured yarn was slightly thinner than the black so the black tended to show through a bit.

As well as the double knitting February’s homework also included two samples of quilted knitting. These patterns are both from Barbara Walker’s A Treasury of Knitting Patterns. First is the single coloured quilted lattice.

Then the two coloured royal quilting.

I really enjoyed knitting both of these samples. Both have a different but definite rythmn about them which makes them very pleasant to knit once you get into the swing. I will have to have a think about how you could incorporate them into a garment.