What is Mosaic Knitting?

Mosaic knitting has become wildly popular in recent years, and it’s no surprise. Mosaic patterns are the perfect introduction to colorwork knitting. If you can knit simple stripes, you have the skills needed for mosaic knitting. Let’s take a close look at how mosaic knitting works and how you can use this technique to add pattern and color to your knitting.

What is Mosaic Knitting?

Mosic knitting uses slipped stitches to pull color up from previous rows, moving color vertically across your fabric. Unlike stranded-color knitting, mosaic knitting uses only one color in each row. The color is changed every two rows or rounds. Slipped stitches are interspersed with knit or purl stitches to create surprisingly intricate patterns.

The History of Mosaic Knitting

Slipped stitches have been used to bring texture to knitted fabric for many years. But the term “mosaic knitting” was coined by the great collector, creator, and documenter of knitting stitch patterns, Barbara G. Walker. Her 1970 book, A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns, includes a chapter called “Mosaic Patterns,” the introduction to which explains the basic technique.

Walker continued her exploration of this versatile technique, and she later added hundreds of patterns to the library with Mosaic Knitting, originally published in 1976 and republished with the addition of 116 brand new patterns (!) in 1997 by Schoolhouse Press. Both of these classics are still available from Schoolhouse Press (see Resources).

I had the honor of briefly meeting Barbara Walker in 2011. She was wearing a tunic-length pullover knitted in a fine-gauge yarn with stripes of different mosaic patterns worked in bright jewel tones combined with black. It was spectacular, and a fitting garment for the mother of mosaic knitting.

How Does Mosaic Knitting Work?

Mosaic knitting is built on a foundation of two-row or two-round stripes. The stripes are interrupted when one or more stitches are slipped, pulling the color from the row below up into the row currently being worked.

The slipped stitches are always slipped as if to purl, and always with the working yarn held to the wrong side of the work. Mosaic knitting can be worked either flat or in the round. It can be based on either stockinette stitch or on garter stitch. Mosaic patterns appear squarer and more nubbly when worked in garter stitch. In stockinette stitch, the patterns produce curvier lines with thicker horizontal elements.

Stitches on the right side (RS) of the work are always slipped purlwise with the yarn in back. It's as easy as that! Insert your needle into the stitch as if to purl (left), move it over to the working needle (right), and keep going. Photos by Kate Larson

When working mosaic motifs, the first row of a stripe (the right-side row, odd-numbered row, or odd-numbered round) establishes the sequence of knit and slipped stitches. The second row of the stripe (the wrong-side row, even-numbered row, or even-numbered round) follows that established sequence. (See a video of how this works on our Instagram channel.) So, if a stitch was knitted in the first row of the stripe, it is knitted (for garter stitch knitted flat or stockinette stitch knitted in the round) or purled (for garter stitch knitted in the round or stockinette stitch knitted flat) in the second row. If a stitch was slipped in the first row, it will be slipped in the second row. Remember, all slipped stitches are slipped as if to purl with the yarn held to the wrong side.

Mosaic Knitting Charts

The first mosaic knitting patterns were written out row-by-row. Depending on the intricacy of the pattern, this can lead to lengthy instructions. With the increasing accessibility of digital chart-making tools, most designers prefer to present mosaic patterns in the form of charts.

The format of mosaic knitting charts varies. Some show only the right-side rows, relying on the knitter to mirror the sequence of knits and slips on the following row. Some only show the color used for each pair of rows, omitting any stitch symbols. Others show every row along with symbols for knit, purl, and slipped stitches.

Here are two examples that represent the same mosaic pattern I used in the Mosaic Mitts pattern. They are different, but equally valid, ways of charting mosaic patterns.