Knitted Rainbow

Friday 22nd May 2020

Tags: Fun, Techniques

Rainbows have become such a feature of our lives, showing our support for the key workers.  They are a symbol of hope and they have been popping up everywhere; in windows, trees, cars and on pavements.

There are so many lovely crocheted rainbow patterns like this one from Kerry Jayne Designs but not so many knitted ones, so we thought we would create a pattern just for you.  This is a great little project that you can make with your kids.

You will need

6 pipe cleaners – we just happened to have them in rainbow colours, but any pipe cleaner will do.

Red, orange, yellow green blue and purple yarn. We used Special DK in shades Matador, Clementine, Daffodil, Apple, French Navy and Proper Purple.

A knitting dolly/Nancy.  If you have never used one of these, there is a great video here.

We cut the pipe cleaners into different lengths so that they can curve into the rainbow shape.

1x 22cm for the red yarn

1x 19.5cm for the orange yarn

1x 17cm for the yellow yarn

1x 14cm for the green yarn

1x 11cm for the blue yarn

1x 8cm for the purple yarn

Fold back 0.5cm at each end so that you don’t have any sharp points at the edge of your rainbow

Start by wrapping the yarn around the knitting dolly.  Make sure you leave a long tail to thread down the body of the dolly.

Work 3 rounds before putting your pipe cleaner in the middle.  Continue to work round the pipe cleaner, carefully pulling the tail down as you go. When you come to the end of the pipe cleaner cut the yarn, thread it onto a needle and lift each stitch off the dolly.  Pull tight to fasten off.

Repeat with all the pipe cleaners.

If you don’t have a knitting dolly you can work a 4 stitch icord around each pipe cleaner and we found this photo tutorial really helpful.

Sew the red knitted tube to the orange one making sure to bend them, so the ends match up – we used a technique called over sewing which is sometimes called whip stitch.  Then sew the yellow to the orange, the green to the yellow, the blue to the yellow and the purple to the blue.

Finally attach some yarn to the middle of the red pipe cleaner so it can be hung up.

If you want to add some fluffy clouds to your rainbow, you can make some white pompoms and sew them on.

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