Day 6: Basic Stitch Patterns

Hi everyone. My name is Jen Lucas from the Knitting Circle. And in this video on our Learn to Knit series, let's talk about what we can do with those knit and purl stitches that we've learned. Like I've mentioned in the previous videos, with knits and purls you can make stockinette stitch, which is that common fabric we think of when we think of knitted fabric, but there's actually thousands of stitch patterns that you can make just with knits and purls. So I'd love to go ahead and show you a few of the most common ones. Let's take a look. Here I have three different stitch patterns that are created using only knits and purls. And these are some very common stitch patterns and fabrics that you're gonna see in knitting. The first one here is ribbing and ribbing can be created a variety of ways but I have done a basic ribbing here. That's knit two, purl two ribbing. You might also sometimes see it called, two by two ribbing. And so this is created by knitting two stitches and then purling two stitches. And what you get is this nice stretchy elastic fabric. And there's all sorts of different variations of this. You can knit one, purl one in ribbing, you could knit three, purl one in ribbing, all different kinds of combinations. But we're gonna just take a look at the knit two, purl two, 'cause it's pretty standard. You would use this for the cuff of a sweater, cuff of a sock, brim of a hat. It has all kinds of uses. You can make beautiful scarves using the stitch pattern. Lots of great uses of knitting and it's created with just knits and purls. This fabric here is seed stitch. And seed stitch is created by knitting one stitch, purling one stitch, and working that all the way across and we'll be doing something similar or exactly the same on the wrong side of the fabric so that we can create a reversible seed stitch fabric. It's really pretty. For a lot of knitters this is their favorite fabric that they create with knitting. You can use this just about anywhere on any knitting project. And then we have something similar to that, called Moss stitch. And Moss stitch is created in a similar way that we'll be doing some knit one, purl ones, but we're gonna be working the rows a little bit differently so that we have, it's a little bit more elongated than the seed stitch. We're sort of repeating the same thing for two rows and then alternating for the next two rows to create this fabric, which looks reversible as well. So let's go ahead and take a look at how to work these fabrics like the knit and purl videos, I'm going to demonstrate how to work them, with the yarn in both my right hand and left hand. Just so that way you can see how to do both and you can figure out which one is the right one for you. So to start, let's do the ribbing. So the ribbing, like I said, we're going to be doing a knit two and then a purl two. So for this particular ribbing that I've worked in this swatch, you would want a multiple of four stitches cast on it to your knitting needle. So I have 16 I think here. So we're gonna go ahead and work across. And so, I have the yarn in my right hand because I am doing the English or throwing method. And so I'm going to insert my needle to knit. I'm going to knit one stitch, knit a second stitch, and so that's my knit two. Now I'm gonna bring the yarn to the front. It's very important that you're coming in between the needles to the front to purl. You don't wanna come over the needle or anything like that. If you come over the needle, you're actually gonna create, what's called a yarn over which we're gonna talk about in another video. That actually is going to add a stitch to your needle. You're gonna put a little hole in your knitting which sometimes you want the holes there if you're doing something like lace, but for ribbing we don't want holes, holes are bad. So we wanna make sure that we're bringing that yarn in between the needle to the front to purl because we need the yarn in the front when we're working a purl stitch. So now I'm just gonna purl two. Now we need to knit again so we need to bring the yarn to the back. So I'm gonna bring the yarn in between the needle to the back. Again, you don't wanna go over the top, in between is key. Yarn's in the back, we knit two. Now bring the yarn between to the front, purl two. And that's all there is to it. You're just doing two stitches of knit, two stitches of purl. And so when you cast on a multiple of four stitches to do this particular ribbing, you actually will just be doing the same thing every row. So we're ending with the purl two. And now to do the next row, we would flip it around to the other side and we would start with the knitting again with the knit two. So the knits, when you're looking at it are gonna create these little V shapes, let's look at the ones that are a little bit further from the edge. So the knit stitches are creating these Vs, and the purl stitches are creating these little bumps or purl bumps. And so you really can read this pattern very easily because now you can see we have Vs here. So now we're gonna knit two, and then purl two, knit two, purl two, all the way down. So when you have a multiple of four in this way just working back and forth, every row is the same. Knit two, purl two, all the way to the end, flip it around, work back the other way, same thing. So to work the next row here I'm going to do the continental method. I'm gonna put the yarn into my left hand. So I'm gonna tension the yarn. I have the yarn in the back because I'm in a knit, so I'm gonna go ahead and knit my two stitches and then same thing as before, the yarn is in the back but now I need it in the front to purl, so you need to just bring it between the needles to purl and then we're gonna purl our two stitches. So purl, yarn's in the front and purl, yarn to the back. So again, we had it in the front, we're gonna go to the back, gonna knit two, bring the yarn to the front, to purl two. Yarn's in the front now, it needs to go to the back. Knit two, yarn to the front, purl two. So when knitting in the continental method for me the tendency is that everything's a little bit tighter to the needle than when I'm knitting using the English or throwing method. So this really can make it pretty speedy once you practice it 'cause everything's just sort of right close to the needle. And so then we're gonna finish it off with that purl two. Here we go. And so, you would just flip it back the other way and keep working back and forth and back and forth. So when you've finished your row, all your stitches, we were here, we're gonna put that back in our left hand and then work the row again. And so that is two by two ribbing or knit two, purl two ribbing. So now let's take a look at the seed stitch. So I have a little swatch here. For seed stitch you most commonly see it written as follows. It'll be knit one, purl one to the last stitch knit one. So you're gonna wanna have an odd number of stitches on the needle. So let's see what we have here. We have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight nine, 10, 11, 12, 13. So an odd number of stitches. And so we're just gonna knit one, purl one, knit one, purl one all the way to the end and then end with that knit one. So let's take a look at that. Again, I'm gonna start by doing the English or throwing method. So we're going to knit one, bring the yarn in between to the front, purl one. Knit one, purl one, and keep working in that way all the way across the row. So what's really nice about these stitch patterns is once you get the concept down you really see how they all are worked in a similar way where we're making sure that we're bringing the yarn in between the needles to work our stitches. And so we ended with that knit one. So now to work back the other way, I'm gonna put the yarn in my left hand. So you can see I flipped so that all of my stitches are now in my left hand. So now let's go ahead and work these. So I'm gonna work this next row with the yarn in my left hand. So we're just doing the same thing every row. We're gonna knit one, yarn to the front to purl. Yarn to the back to knit, yarn to the front to purl. Yarn to the back to knit, yarn to the front to purl. Knit, front, purl, back. And we're just creating this nice texture with the seed stitch. And last stitch should end with a knit. So what's interesting about this one is that with the ribbing we were doing the same thing every row and we're doing the same thing here with the seed stitch. But because we have that odd number of stitches we are alternating the knits and the purls. And what I mean by that is that we started with the knit and then purled. And so you can see we've got the V, and then the bump and then a V and then a bump, all the way across we end with the knit that makes the V. So when we flip it back over though, you can see now we're seeing the other side of those stitches. So you can see that now this is a purl bump here, but we're still gonna be knitting because that's what's creating the texture. So here if it looks like a purl, we're gonna knit it, and then when it looks like a knit we're gonna purl it. So unlike the ribbing where you could sort of knit the knits and purl the purls, here we're going to knit the purls and then purl the knits. So it can be a little bit confusing, but again like everything just takes a little bit of practice. And so then finally, let's just talk about the Moss stitch 'cause the Moss stitch actually is worked in a similar manner to the seed stitch and that we're going to be doing knit one purl ones on every row. So for this particular stitch pattern what we're going to be doing is we're going to cast on an even number of stitches and we're going to knit one, purl one all the way across. So knit one, purl one, that's two stitches. So when you have an even number of stitches, you'll be ending with the purl one. You're gonna do that for two rows. You're gonna knit one, purl one to end. Then on row three, you're going to purl one, knit one across and then repeat that again on the next row. So again, for Moss stitch, you would do, knit one, purl one to the end for rows one and two. And for rows three and four, you would purl one, knit one to the end. And that gives you this nice fabric. But if you can work the seed stitch, you can work the Moss stitch. This is just over in even number stitches and it's worked over four rows. But those are just some easy stitch patterns that you can do only knowing how to knit and purl. And so I hope that as you're practicing your stitches that you'll go ahead and try some of these stitch patterns because if you can do these, you really are building a great foundation to be able to make all sorts of things with your knitting. Isn't it kind of cool that with just knits and purls you can create all different kinds of fabric? Knitting is really so fun and so versatile and there's so much to explore even with just these two stitches. Thanks so much for watching me here at the knitting circle and joining me on this Learn to Knit series. I'm excited to show you a few more stitches before we get started on our Cal. I'll see you again soon.