How to Trap Floats in Stranded Color Work Knitting

Rounding out the last necessary technique to know before I release my Amanda Hat pattern, it’s important to know how to trap floats. Trapping or catching floats is a necessary skill for all stranded color work, but can be a bit tricky to learn.

The purpose of trapping floats is to make sure there aren’t long loose strings handing on the back of your work. Not only are these strings generally not pretty, but they can also catch on fingers, mess with your gauge, and make your color work pucker. Trapping the floats helps to prevent this, helping your color work pieces look better for longer.

When to Trap Your Floats

In general, you’ll want to trap your float when you have a gap in using that particular color. I generally prefer to trap a float if there’s a gap of 4 or more stitches in between a color (for kids clothes I tend to do it more often as their little fingers and toes can get caught on the floats much more easily). The larger the float, the more times I’ll have to trap that float.

And when there are more than two color in a row, you’ll still need to trap the floats for each particular color as needed.

For example, on this section of pattern, we have long breaks in between colors and we’re working with three colors. If we don’t trap the floats, we’ll be carrying a large loose strands in the back of our work. There are 24 sts in this pattern, with Light Blue (LB), Dark Blue (DB), and Light Gray (LG). Moving right to left on each row, I’ll show you where I would trap my floats of each color.

Row 55: I would catch the LB float on the 6th st of the pattern (the middle LG st of that part), the LG float on the 12th st of the pattern (the middle DB st of that part), the LB on the 18th st of the pattern (middle LG st), and LG on the 24th st (last DB st). Because there’s no part that the DB isn’t used for more than 4 stitches, I wouldn’t need to catch any floats of it.

Row 56: I would trap the LG float on the 3rd st of the pattern, the LB on the 4th and 8th st of the pattern, the LG on the 9th, 12th, and 15th st of the pattern, the LB on the 16th and the 20th st of the pattern, and the LG on the 21st and 24th st of the pattern.

Row 57: I would trap the LG float on the 3rd, 9th, 12th, 15th, 21st, and 24th st of the pattern. Normally, I wouldn’t trap my floats on the same stitch of each row so it doesn’t ladder, but with only a few rows, it shouldn’t be a problem.

Here’s what the chart would look like with marking where to trap those floats. Each dot represents a trapped float, with the color of the dot representing what color yarn in trapped there.

How to Trap Your Floats

Now that you know when to trap your floats, it’s time to actually learn how to trap them. In the video below, I show you how to trap them using the two handed method, but it works with a knitting thimble as well.

To trap a right float (meaning trap a float that held to the right of the yarn used to knit the stitch), you’ll insert your needle into the stitch as normal, yarn over with the yarn you want to trap, then yarn over with the yarn used for the stitch like normal. Once you have yarned over with the color you’re working with, you’ll remove the yarn over of the trap yarn going out the same way you yarned over. This will cause the yarn to be trapped on the yarn you’re knitting with. Proceed to knit the stitch like normal.

To trap a left float (meaning trap the yarn held to the left of the yarn used to knit the stitch), you’ll insert the needle into the stitch as normal. You’ll then put the needle under the yarn you want to trap, going under it from the left. While the working needle is under the yarn to be trapped, yarn over with your working yarn as normal. After you’ve yarned over, you can then move the needle out from under the float yarn (back the way you went in) and the yarn should be trapped. Proceed to knit the stitch like normal.

It can be really difficult to describe these motions, so please watch my youtube video on trapping floats for a demonstration of it.

When you’re working with three colors, remember that how you’ll trap the float is dependent on where the float yarn is being held in relation to your working stitch. So while you may work the middle yarn sometimes like a left trap, you’ll have to work it like a right trap if catching it with the yarn to the left of it.

I hope this post helped you out to understand the importance of trapping floats and how to catch them. If you need any clarifications or help, please feel free to leave me a message and I will try to help you out as best as I can.

Happy knitting!