How to Change Colors with a Spit Splice

I love knitting with lots of colors, and I love stripes. I recently finished making this very colorful striped pullover. The first time I wore it, a friend commented that she’d never make a sweater like it because of all the ends that would need to be woven in. She was surprised when I explained that there were very few ends to deal with because I joined the colors with a spit splice (known in polite company as a felted join). I taught her this trick, and now we’ll share it with you.

Where to Use This Technique

Just like with any other felting technique, this only works with fibers that will felt. Traditional wools are a good candidate, as is alpaca. The Spit-Splice Color Change is not a good choice for superwash wool, cotton, linen, silk, or synthetics. But don’t count blends out—experiment with them. How well wet felting works will depend on the grip of the blend.

Every animal fiber has a different scale profile (with the exception of silk, the only protein fiber with no scales). Some fibers have many small smooth scales, others have larger rough scales. It’s the scales of the animal protein fiber that grab onto each other.

Change Color with a Spit Splice

Watch Now

Andrea will demonstrate the technique in this quick video. For more detail, scroll down for step-by-step photos.

Planning My Project

The stripe pattern for my sweater had a 60-row repeat. I had 5 light colors and 5 dark colors, and I alternated 2-row stripes. When a color is only going to cross 2–4 rows, I’m perfectly happy to just carry it up the wrong side, and you can see that’s what I did here. But as I finished one light color, I joined it to the next light color. As I finished a dark color, I joined it to the next dark color.

Instead of ending up with hundreds of ends to weave it, there were only a few.

Step-by-Step Instructions

Re-knit those last 4 stitches. You should find that your color change happens right where you want it to.

For this stripe sequence, I knit 2 rows of red (the dark color), then began working with the pink, which was ready just where I needed it.

Felting Your Color Changes Makes Finishing Faster

Don’t let dread of weaving in ends keep you from making your own sweater of many colors! Once you’ve tried changing color with a spit splice, you’ll be looking for opportunities to use this great technique.

Sandi Rosner is the technical content editor for all things yarn at Interweave. When she isn’t knitting, she usually has her nose in a book. You’ll find new technical content from Sandi nearly every week at www.interweave.com.