I am punching above my weight here, but this Egyptian-themed sweater looks so interesting to knit. And the page is Ravelry: Egyptian Fair Isle Jumper pattern by Weldons
The pattern instructs that “front and back alike.” However, from the picture, you can see that the front panel has a rather complicated design. Can I knit the back panel with the same shape, but only in one color yarn without all the fair isle work?
Thank you so much.
Basic pattern question for a fair isle pattern
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What a cool pattern. It is ambitious but you should do great. If you’ve not done stranded colorwork before you might want to practice on some swatches. I think knitting the back plain should work fine. I only do stranded colorwork in the round and that would be a problem for keeping the back solid but if you’re knitting pieces to seam later, sure, doing the back solid should be fine. I found a project page that looks to have the back in one color. Unfortunately there are no notes. The only problem I can think of is that you might get a different row gauge on front and back but probably that won’t happen.
https://www.ravelry.com/projects/BlueSpiderKnit/egyptian-fair-isle-jumper
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Thank you for reminding me to check other people’s project pages! The tension can be an issue. And apparently, people come up with their own designs. I should think about changing some of the patterns, too. I have done stranded colorwork before, but my floats are not pretty. I guess I will start knitting, and if the front panel colorwork is tolerable and presentable, I may do some more colorwork. If not, I will knit in one color.
Both the Scarab and cats look lovely!
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If I thought I’d actually do use them I’d buy the pattern for the charts! I love those motifs. As long as you don’t have floats that are too long and aren’t too tight the public side looking good is what matters. One reason I will only do stranded colorwork in the round is trapping floats on the wrong side isn’t something I choose to do. Roxanne Richardson has some good videos on trapping floats and compares the different ways of doing it. If you haven’t seen her videos you might like to check them out. I learned a lot from them. Here’s a link to one. Stranded Colorwork: Trapping Floats by Twisting or Weaving // Technique Tuesday
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Once you have knitted up a decent size of the colour work front you can use it to measure tension and adjust the plain back accordingly if needed by changing needle size for the plain side.
I’m doing a colourwork piece at the moment and as much as I think my tension is even when I’m working the reality is not at all even. I have some very small stitches and some very big (I don’t know where they come from but they just appear!). Using a much larger piece such as a whole front to work out gauge would be more realistic than using small swatches.
It’s a real statement piece.
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That is really helpful! Thank you for sharing the tips. 
That’s a great video showing all those float trapping methods. Thanks for posting it. I love rox videos.
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You’re welcome. Rox is one of my gurus when it comes to how to do things. I found that one helpful when I was trying to suss out info on floats in stranded colorwork.
I think this pattern needs bobbins for each motif rather than stranding like a traditional fair isle pattern. Also, if front and back are exactly the same, you might want to add extra short rows on the back to make it fit better. Otherwise, the neck on the front will be high and low on the back.
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I would definitely do this in intarsia, not stranded. And you can always knit the back plain. Sure can. But use bobbins and knit the front intarsia.
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Yes, I plan to use intarsia for each motif, and the pattern suggests that I do that. But I need to use a little stranded color work for each motif. Thank you for the tip.
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I agree with DomJam. This looks more like intarsia instead of Fair Isle. Intarsia involves using bobbins of the different colors instead of Fair Isle not using more that two colors per row. Intarsia is my nemesis whereas Fair Isle is so much fun!
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