If you are a lover of colourful knitting and stripes, you may well fancy getting to grips with knitting some wonderful zig zags.

It is actually quite simple to knit in a zig zag pattern, and once you have mastered the stitch techniques you can start to make some fantastic zig zag scarves, hats and more!

Read on to find out how to knit a zig zag pattern and get your stripe on!

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The easy way to knit in zig zag

In the main photo you will see some zig zag knitting that possibly looks really complicated. In fact, this knitting sample was made by using a one row repeat pattern. The zig zags are formed, like many other zig zag knitting stitches, by cleverly using increases and decreases throughout the row.

If you use a self patterning yarn like the one shown in the photo (it is Noro Silk Garden Lite), the changing colours in your zig zags make the technique even more easy. Look at all those yummy colours that are going to be worked into this piece of knitting!

Here is the one row stitch pattern to form the zig zags shown in the photo:

Cast on in multiples of ten stitches. For the best result, cast on at least 30 stitches.

Repeat this stitch pattern for every row until work is of desired length, and cast off.

k4, k2tog, k3, kfb

You will see that the ends of the piece of zig zag knitting are wavy. This is inevitable because of the increasing and decreasing. If you wish to knit in zig zags without wavy ends, you will need to use a Fair Isle/stranded knitting technique.

There is a great article on Lovecrafts about knitting zig zags using techniques similar to the one shown above, and in Fair Isle. You can find that article by clicking here.

Looking for a quick knitting project to practice your zig zags? How about this free knitting pattern for cute zig zag dishcloths?

You may also enjoy our article about how to knit Missoni style scarves – it contains links to many more free zig zag knitting patterns.