I have become enchanted with the beautiful patterned brioche stitch patterns, such as those seen in Nancy Marchant’s book, Knitting Fresh Brioche. I wondered if I could replicate those lovely, viney, leaf-ish patterns using the knitting machine.

Short answer, yes.

It seems like yes, this is very possible. Here are the details of my swatching attempt.

Using about 48 needles in 1x1 rib, I cast on using the circular cast on.

T3/T3

The white side of the sample was from the ribber, the red side of the sample was from the main bed.

With COL, and white yarn, I set carriages to tuck both ways on the main bed, and knit normally both ways on the ribber (T/N). I knit 1 row, then transferred the 4 stitches left of 0 one needle to the left, and 4 stitches to the right of 0 one needle to the right. In other words, L1,3,5,7 -> L3,5,7,9 and R2,4,6,8 -> R4,6,8,10. Then I filled the empty needles with the same color heel from the transferred stitch.
Then I knit back, changed to red yarn and set carriages to N/T, knit 2 rows, changed to white, knit 1 row, and transfered stitches as follows: L3,5,7,9 -> L5,7,9,11 and R4,6,8,10 -> R6,8,10,12. Filled the empty needles in the same way, and so on.

My intention was to continue with this pattern, but I eventually lost track of where I was.

I did several transfers in this way, and then I tried a few times making transfers on both of the knitted (white) rows. I can’t differentiate these in the swatch, and will have to do further experimenting with both of those techniques.

I then switched to doing transfers on the main bed, on the knitted, red rows. This time I wrote out the pattern of transfers and followed it, so it’s very symmetrical. One thing I did differently from one side to the other is that, on the right side of the sample (when viewed from the red side) I used the heel of the un-transferred stitch to fill the empty needle, and on the left side (as viewed from the red side) I used the heel of the transferred stitch. I prefer this one, as I think it creates a flatter, more filled in stitch.

I did try to use automatic needle selection on the main bed to select needles for stitches to be transferred, but it didn’t work. For some reason all needles were selected to D on patterning rows. Not sure what’s going on there.

I also didn’t try patterning on both sides at the same time - or I guess it would be more accurate to say patterning on each side when its stitches are knitted.

All-in-all I am very pleased, indeed with these results. I will be doing a few more swatching experiments with technique details, but I am now convinced that I can replicate those gorgeous brioche results that I’ve seen done in hand knitting.

Yippee!!