How to knit Jute stitch – Free Knitting Pattern & Video Tutorial!
Lately I’ve been really enjoying discovering stitch patterns that use techniques other than just knit and purl stitches (Garter Slip Stitch and Open Star Stitch are a couple I’ve recently covered)
Jute Stitch cleverly uses slipped stitches and the working yarn to create a textured piece of knitting that has a distinctive style that I haven’t seen in any other stitch pattern.
At just a two row repeat, its easy for beginners to pick up and even though it uses slip stitches to create texture, the technique is easy to learn and I cover things in nice simple steps in the video that accompanies this written pattern.
In the interests of openness, it’s important to note that Jute Stitch has a real urge to curl inwards at the sides.
Normally I find a simple garter stitch selvedge will sort this and help a piece lay flat, but in the case of Jute Stitch even this wasn’t enough.
I would therefore suggest that when you’re knitting Jute Stitch, that alongside adding some side edging, you also work a garter stitch edge top and bottom, as this should help your finished item to lay nice and flat.
I’m sure blocking a piece will also help, but I deliberately left my sample unblocked so I could show you how this stitch pattern can behave.
Is this a reversible stitch pattern?
Whenever I produce a knitting tutorial, or a baby blanket pattern, I’m always being asked if its reversible or not. Hopefully having a little section to cover this question within my blog posts will help to answer that question nice and quickly.
The Jute Stitch isn’t a reversible pattern, it has a definite right and wrong side. This means it isn’t a stitch to use if you’re wanting a reversible knitting project.
That being said, the reverse isn’t ugly, or messy. The photo below shows how the reverse of this stitch looks:
I’m a big fan of non reversible stitches, I don’t like the constraints that keeping a project reversible puts on my creative mind. You’ll see me using lots of stitch patterns that have a definite right and wrong side, but I’m yet to find one that looks messy or ugly on the reverse side.
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Written pattern
Row 1 (RS): p1, *sl1pwyf, p1* repeat from *to* until end of row.
Row 2 (WS): k1, *p1, k1* repeat from *to* until end of row.
Repeat these two rows until your project is the size you want, then cast off in pattern on a wrong side row.