Ladderback Jacquard

A machine knitting technique for linking up floats on fairisle designs

Step by step tutorial by Lorna Hamilton-Brown MBE

Benefits of Ladderback Jacquard

• Single bed fairisle designs with long floats can be knitted.

• Does away with long floats.• Idea for Baby and Childrenswear.• Produces a lighter weight fabric than Double

Jacquard.• Can be used with 4 ply yarn and thicker on standard

gauge machine.• The technique can used on Chunky machines with

ribber.

Ladderback Jacquard versus Single-bed Fairisle

• Needs a Ribber and colour changer.• Slight gaps appear on right side of knitting.

These can be used to enchance the design.• Jacquard punchcards need to be produced.

Electronic knitting machine automatically convert fairisle patterns into jacquard patterns

What equipment is needto produce Ladderback Jacquard on a Brother Knitting machine

• Ribber – KR830 or KR850• Double bed colour changer KRC-830 or *KRC-

900 (*fits KH260 or KH270 & KR260 ribber)• Fine knit bar• A sponge bar in good condition

For the following sample 4 ply Arcylic yarn was used. This is the wrong side of the knitting.

Attach the colour changer in the gap created by pushing the sponge bar to the right of the machine

Tighten the knob on colour changer. Insert fine knit bar on main bed. Thread colour changer.

With colour 1 and the carriage on the right-hand side set the ribber carriage as shown. Set Pitch lever set to P.

Set main carriage as shown. The change knob is set to ‘NL’

Arrange your needles to knit the rib. In this example the needles are set for 1 by 1 rib.

Knit one row. Finishing with the carriage on the left

Insert cast on comb

Make sure the end of the cast-on comb is fully pushed in, and the end hook of the comb is in front.

Prepare to knit two circular rows.Set the ribber carriage as shown

Set the main carriage as shown.Knit two rows.

Finishing with the carriage on the left

To knit rib set ribber carriage as shown

Set main carriage as shown. Knit the require number of

rows for the rib finishing with the carriage on the left.

Use the double eyelet tool to transfer all stitches from the ribber to the main bed.

Prepare to knit Ladderback JacquardSet the Pitch lever to H

NB in this example the heel of every 4th stitch was transferred to the ribber. Choose the gap that suits your design. That could be

the heel of every 5th or 6th stitch etc., or irregular gaps.

Transfer the heel of every fourth stitch on the main bed to the nearest needle on the ribber.

Set the carriage to start knitting pattern by turning the change knob to KC. Set main tension.

The tension on the ribber should be 2 whole number lower than the main bed.

Lock the punchcard on row 1 by pushing the lever to the circle symbol.

Knit one row. The needles for the first row of the pattern are selected.

With the carriage on the right hand side, set the ribber to slip one row.

Set the main carriage as shown. Release the punchcard by moving the lever to the small triangle.

Push the carriage into the colour changer. COLLECT col 1

SELECT col 2

Colour 2 is selected

Knit the required number of rows.

The front and Laddered back of the knitted sample are shown below.

Thank you for watching

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lornahb

Lorna Hamilton-Brown MBE

hi@lornahamiltonbrown.com