The Flower Bobble: A Novel Textural Stitch for Your Knitting

It's not everyday that you come across a new technique in knitting. In fact, most of the time the things I stumble upon while experimenting aren't even new, they're just unknown to me. But I've never seen a bobble shaped like a flower, so I'll consider it a novel creation and share the story of its origin.

The story of this whimsical little stitch begins at Vogue Knitting Live in 2025. I was sitting in the bar of the Marriott Marquis in Times Square, as one does during the yearly gathering. There was plenty of chatting and knitting - it's a place that people meet and build connections. I made many friends that night, and one of them is an indie dyer from Toronto who approached me with a skein of her assigned pooling yarn. I have a policy against taking skeins of yarn. Designers are often approached with these sort of offers and, although kind and well-meaning, I know that most yarn that I receive via gift bags and the like are squirreled away into my stash boxes.

But this time was different. Karen of Feisty Fibres caught me the evening before my Stitch by Color class. This class uses multi color yarn to determine the stitches in a project. I try to show the full range of yarn brands and designers who are innovating with this sort of stitchwork, but I rarely have examples of assigned pooling yarn intact in the skein. So when presented with a skein of assigned pooling yarn in the Dahlia colorway I broke down and agreed to take it to show it in class the next day.

In my class, I teach a technique from Pop Knitting by Britt-Marie Christoffersson. Her innovative work combines color and texture in innovative stitch patterns. One of the techniques that she presents is a cast on, then bind off within a row to create little worms of stitches popping off the surface of the fabric. The texture is somewhat unique from other bobbles and it works perfectly with assigned pooling yarn.

All of the yarns that I use in class contain more than two colors, and one of my demos is created using a ball of basic acrylic that I found in the clearance bin at Michael's. In the color repeat, two green tones are next to each other. I thought it would be fun to work two of Christoffersson's bobbbles into the same stitch to highlight the two different colors of green. It also happens to make them appear as a sprout!

Taking the concept of two "chain bobbles" worked into the same stitch and expanding it to 5 might create a flower instead of just a sprout. Without breaking open the beautiful skein of yarn, I started to experiment with this concept in a solid color of red heart super saver, my trusted companion for stitch development. I love to use this yarn in scenarios where I believe that I'll be making a bunch of swatches that don't necessarily look right. The price point is right for experimentation.

This time, the first attempt worked! It's a little different than my final instructions, but it is proof of concept.

Obviously, I rushed to tell Karen about this development. The only issue is the amount of yarn that each flower consumes. It takes a lot more color than available assigned pooling yarns provide. We started on the path of development for a slightly different yarn to accommodate this special technique. In the meantime, I experimented with a skein of Feisty Fibres Rave colorway which happens to have the right amount of blue to create a nice little flower. 

If you look closely at this swatch, you may notice that all of these flowers are slightly different looking and that's because it took a while to figure out the best way to make the stitches turn out consistently well. Eventually, as you can see, I settled on a method and started to develop some patterns to work with it. 

As usual, I want to share the techniques that I love and find interesting with you for free, so I've created some YouTube videos and a pattern for an i-cord Garland embellished with little flowers. Even without the special yarn, the stitches are clear and visible. You can use this free pattern to create whimsical decorations for your home, holiday festivities, or whatever use you can find. Or you can just use this free pattern as a way to try this new technique before investing in a larger project.

Karen and I have been working on a special flower shawl using a new extended pooling yarn, specially created to work with this flower stitch. When used alone, the flowers can get quite dense. They take a while to do and eat up your yarn. Though I think it's worth the payoff, they seem best used carefully and intentionally 

Our first pattern, the floral bouquet shawl, is now available on Karen's website as a kit. On 20th May 26th, the pattern will be available on Ravelry and in my shop for download. The shawl uses a solid yarn that coordinates with your extended pulling color to create a fade of flowers cascading across the edge of the piece.

I cannot overstate how much fun I've had developing these stitches, working with Feisty Fibres, and playing around with the different capabilities of this bobble. Can have effects in color work, brioche, and all sorts of textural contexts. I invite you to try this stitch on your own and experiment with it. 

The patterns contain information about how to alter the flowers to have different sizes and quantities of petals. You can get many different looks as I discovered when working  a small swatch of the shawl in Berrocco Sox Metallic (blue triangle above). The flowers work perfectly with many self-striping sock yarns but I haven't yet found one in my stash that's still in production. Notice how some of the flowers are much larger than others to accommodate a longer interval of contrast color in the yarn. You can imagine the potential for specialized colorways and variations that accurately portray flowers from nature.

If you are a designer and have questions about using this stitch in different contexts, I am happy to share my experience with the stitch and encourage designers to link their patterns to the tutorial videos. If you work with this technique, I only ask that you acknowledge its origin. I'm not just looking out for myself, I am simply building on the work of BMC and want her to get the appropriate credit as well. 

The best part of the knitting and craft community is that you never know where inspiration and collaboration will start. There's a better chance that it will happen at a convention where we're all gathered together, but it can also come from a book, a colleague, or an intuition. Please enjoy the pattern, the videos and hopefully the story as you brighten up your spring by adding some plural texture to your projects.