Shawl Styling Tips & Photo Contest

Shawls are the perfect summer crafting projects! They usually need only one or two skeins of yarn (making them extremely portable), and can be knitted or crocheted in lightweight yarns that create beautiful drapey garments. Add some lace and cables for texture, or use up those variegated yarns to add some fun summer color!

While fun to make, handmade shawls can sometimes be a challenge to wear. Today, we share some inspiration to style all those gorgeous summer shawls PLUS a chance to win some fabulous prizes in our "Summer of Shawls" photo contest!

Styling Shawls

Centered in Back

Rriangular shawls can easily be worn with the point centered in the back and the sides draped over your shoulders. With a rectangular or a circular (or semicircular) shawl, try centering the shawl over your shoulders with the bulk of the shawl to your back. Worn this way, your beautiful handiwork is on full display, and your shawl will keep your shoulders, upper arms and torso warm. This is perfect for the chill of air-conditioning indoors, or on cool evenings.

Scarf Style

Rectangular stoles, skinny asymmetrical triangles and crescent shawls can be wrapped around your neck once (or multiple times) to be worn like a scarf. This is best done with lace and fingering-weight shawls to keep the bulk around your neck to a minimum. But, if done with a heavier weight yarn, your shawl will add warmth around your neck in the chilly fall and winter days.

Kerchief/Bandana Style

To wear a shawl kerchief or bandana style, you place the center point of your shawl at your front, and wrap the sides/tails around your neck and bring them back to the front. This creates a gorgeous focal point at your front, and allows you to show all that gorgeous work you’ve put into your shawl. Again, lighter weight shawls will wrap more easily in this style, but heavier weight shawls will keep your neck warm!

Off Center

Naturally, our favorite way to style shawls involves using a shawl pin or stick! Many people enjoy styling their shawls off-center, draping a point over one shoulder, or securing the ends over one shoulder with a gorgeous shawl pin or s tick. Not only will a shawl pin keep your work safe and secure, they can also add visual interest and enhance your handmade shawl! We have a variety of shawl pins that we use when styling shawls off center, or in any of the ways we pictured above.

Summer of Shawls Photo Contest

We'd love to see how you are styling your knitted and crocheted shawls this summer! Share your photos with us in our Ravelry group or on social media using the #knitterspride and #kpshawlstyle hashtags. You may post as many photos as you like, and while photos do not necessarily have to include Knitter's Pride shawl pins, we would love to see how you are using them to style your shawls!

Winners will get to select from the following prizes:

Deluxe Ginger Interchangeable Set

Ginger Tunisian Crochet Set

Royale Special Interchangeable Set

Rainbow Knit Blockers

We'll randomly select FOUR lucky winners to announce here on the Knitter's Pride blog on Friday, July 26. Good luck!

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Winner + Designer Spotlight: Boo Knits

Our ongoing Designer Spotlight feature allows us to get a glimpse of what drives them to create.

Today, we interview Boo Knits. Bev is a knitter of shawls predominantly, and she has an avid obsession for beautiful yarns, beads and knitting needles. She lives in mildly moist but beautifully green England.

When did you learn to knit/crochet?
My aunt tried to teach me when I was a child but gave it up as a bad job when I just couldn’t hold my yarn properly. I still don’t! Many, many years later I taught myself with the aid of books, YouTube and a fair bit of trial and error to find the easiest way that worked for me.

What are your favorite projects to design?
I love to design shawls and have designed a couple of scarves/stoles but that doesn’t mean that that is all I will ever design. I have something different on the needles at the moment and we will have to wait and see whether it will become a pattern or not. I love the fun of designing and knitting lace – the playing with pattern and texture is mesmerizing.

Diamond Fizz by Boo Knits

A lot of knitters are intimidated by lace knitting. What are some of your fool proof tips for success with lace projects?
The most important thing is as simple as read the pattern. Read it again. Make a cup of coffee. Read the pattern. The answers to many of the questions I get asked are already in the pattern. Another useful tip - Stitch Markers! Stitch Markers are your friends, they are not a sign that you are new, less than able, cannot count, they are there to help keep track of your stitches and pattern and to help to make sure you don’t get to the end of the row only to have to tink back to put something right at the beginning. The finer your stitch markers the better, especially with lace knitting as some of the thicker markers can leave a mark in your knitting that looks like a ladder. These often disappear after blocking but not always and prevention is better than cure.

Many of your designs use beads; do you have any tips or tutorials to help knitters who are new to this technique?
Using beads is much easier than anyone would think. I would definitely recommend the better-quality beads on the market and particularly like Miyuki, Toho and Matubo – they have nice, smooth, large holes to get your yarn through. I almost always use their Size 6 Seed Beads and Size 5 Triangles on lace as the smaller beads simply get lost on anything heavier than cobweb. All of my patterns have the beads placed on the stitch individually. This ensures that the bead sits nice and straight on the stitch rather than sitting on a slant which happens when the beads are pre-strung.

There are many ways to apply a bead; with a tiny crochet hook, dental floss, a specially designed beader or, my favourite way, using a cro-tat hook. I load beads onto about six cro-tats at a time and stand them up in either a small vase or a jar of beads so that I don’t have to keep reloading. This means it is much quicker to finish a row with beads on and is less fiddly than only having one bead at a time.

Somehow it is smoother to apply beads when you have several on your hook. Just pop your stitch onto the loaded cro-tat, hold your hook at about 45 degrees with your stitch taut (at about 90 degrees from the hook) and push the bottom bead gently. The top bead should just pop onto your stitch and you are then ready to work the stitch as directed in the pattern.

What is your absolute favorite Knitter's Pride product, the one you would HAVE to have if you were stranded on a desert island?
As a lace knitter, it would have to be blocking wires and t-pins – an absolute must for anyone knitting shawls! I am sure, if stranded too long, they would become really good multi-purpose tools too.

Moonflower by Boo Knits

I have a MKAL starting 1st May called Just Be You. The shawl has been designed in conjunction with Lichtfaden for Sabine’s Meridian Pure Silk yarn. Just Be You is a crescent shaped, beaded and worked from the top down in a heavy lace weight yarn 660m/110g.

Sabine’s love for colour is evident to all and we talked at length about a style and influence for the design. Wave-Gotik-Treffen (WGT) is a gothic music and fashion festival held every year, for the past twenty-five years, in Leipzig, Germany.

With a Victorian picnic in the park, readings, theatre performances and medieval markets as well as the huge number of music events it is the biggest festival of its kind anywhere and is considered the ‘Mecca’ for cybergoths, metal heads, steampunks, neo-Victorians, dark romantics, dark electro, industrial and medieval fans.

Thousands of people descend on the city wearing the most amazing outfits – people attend alone, with friends or with their entire family and travel the world over to take part and experience this week-long event that is always a friendly, tolerant and trouble-free festival. So, whether your style is Victorian Lady, Gothic, Steampunk, or Jeans and T-shirt – Just Be You!

This shawl is a celebration of all of us, whoever we are, whatever we are and wherever we are – that we accept ourselves and others without judgement. Choose your colour and wear your shawl with pride and love and be true to yourself.

If you cannot wait until 1st May to cast on, then there are lots of other patterns available to try. Rum and Cola and Spritzer are brilliant for those new to lace, Voodoo and Spellbound would be great for anyone wanting something with more detail and Wintersweet, Danse Macabre and Temptress would be perfect for those with more experience. There really is something for everyone.

Winner
Congratulations to Connie K., this month's giveaway winner! We will contact you to arrange for the delivery of your prize. Thanks to everyone who entered this month's giveaway!