Should I do duplicative stitch, intarsia, or fair isle for this pattern? And some questions about knitting needle size.

[sunflowerdango]

The pattern is Louise Walker’s Tiger Rug. Ravelry: Tiger Rug pattern by Louise Walker
Firstly, I want to thank @ salmonmac for helping me understand the knitting chart. And here is the final work. I did many things wrong, but it is finished.

Sorry for the pictures, I just feel it is easier to show problems with pictures.
As you can see from the picture, my colorwork mimicking a tiger’s fur is a mess. I used the intarsia method suggested by the pattern and had many bobbins, but they didn’t help. The fur pattern of the black and orange stripes are uneven.

When I started a new row and tried to use the bobbin from the last row, the knitting work was already stretched. In this scenario, I don’t think the intarsia works for me.

Here is the back part of the tiger rug with no pattern.

I think for the front part, maybe I can simply knit with orange and white, and then use black duplicative stitches to sew the pattern.
Do you think the duplicative stitch method work? Or is my intarsia method wrong?
Or should I use fair isle?
The pattern is for US 19 / 15 mm. I used 10 mm because it is the largest needles I had. I used lion brand hometown yarn and the suggested size is 9 mm for knitting. If I want to make the rug with 15mm needle, do you think I can still use the hometown yarn? or should I buy yarn that is thicker?

[salmonmac]

Glad to be able to help. I think it turned out very well, nice even knitting which shows on the back. Yes, a bit of unevenness in the stripes but maybe that’s just tiger genetics at work.
I’m surprised that the pattern would suggest intarsia which obviously worked for the designer. I’d more likely use stranded (fair isle) knitting because the areas of the stripes are relatively small. You might try this out on a swatch to make sure that the thin stripes stand out enough.

Hometown is a super chunky yarn so it should work well with the larger needles. The rug won’t be as dense as it is now.
(Probably best to delete the photo of the chart due to designer copyright. You can use the pencil icon in the lower right to edit.)

[sunflowerdango]

Thank you for the prompt reply. I should definitely try some fair isle knitting. I always want to do it, and the float pictures people share are so pretty.
And I have deleted the pattern picture. That’s very inconsiderate of me.

[salmonmac]

Thanks for taking care of the editing.

Give the stranded knitting a try and remember to stretch out the floats on the right hand needle so that they don’t pucker the knit fabric.