Why would you want to switch out a cross stitch color?
A few years ago I was asked to knit a pair of hose for a young dancer. I am a fairly slow knitter and I could see that she was going to be close to outgrowing her kilt shortly after I finished. I had knit a hose with similar colors previously for an older dancer. I had since knit the older dancer a new pair for a new kilt. I knew that the old pair were sitting in a drawer not being used. The dancer was happy to sell them back to me.
This is a great trick to know if you are ever looking for a used pair of hose and you find some that are close except for the cross stitch color(s).
The tartan for the newly requested pair of tartan hose was Dress Royal Scott. The old pair was made for Dress Blue Menzies. You can see from the picture shown of the swatches that the colors are the same except for the green stitch in the Scott and the red in the Menzies.
I decided to try switching the red for green to save myself many hours in a new pair of hose.
Note: The blue colors in the swatches actually match better in real life than they look in this picture.
How to switch out the color!
The technique that I used for adding the new color is called Duplicate Stitch. It is often used as a technique to add embellishment to knit pieces, much like embroidery. You can find instructions in books or the internet. I like the following YouTube video.
Once I completed the Duplicate Stitch with green over top of the red I decided to be brave and cut out the red stitches because they were showing through a bit. I very carefully cut the red yarns and pulled them out.
Final Result!
The final result was quite impressive.
The new socks perfectly matched the Dress Royal Scott.
The young dancer was quite pleased to receive her socks within a week instead of my usual three months.
