Artistry in Crochet: Create a Half-Circle Shawl | Lee Sartori | Skillshare
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Artistry in Crochet: Create a Half-Circle Shawl

teacher avatar Lee Sartori, Crochet Designer

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Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Introduction

      1:33

    • 2.

      Start Your Shawl with Stitch Math

      6:35

    • 3.

      Learn the Basic Body Stitches

      10:21

    • 4.

      Add the Cable Crossover

      7:31

    • 5.

      Finish With a Border

      6:35

    • 6.

      Final Thoughts

      0:57

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About This Class

Add a classic crochet piece to your closet by making your own crochet shawl made with cable stitching and a fun border. 

What started out as a passion for making modern garments and adorable amigurumi brought crocheter Lee Santori more fun projects, cool opportunities, and career freedom than she could’ve imagined. Now between stitching up her favorite characters and new additions to her wardrobe, Lee makes crochet content for her 111K Instagram followers and guest hosts on the popular PBS Show Knit and Crochet Now. As the author of four crochet books, Lee enjoys sharing her love for turning a few skeins of yarn into a work of art that can be cherished for generations to come. 

As an expert in the world of crochet, Lee is excited to reveal how to create one of her more versatile wearable garments: the half-circle shawl. As you crochet your new addition to your closet, you’ll learn how to do the cable knit stitch, a fun border, and intermediate crochet stitches like back post double crochet and front post treble crochet. 

With Lee as your creative guide, you’ll:

  • Learn to recognize common crochet mistakes 
  • Use stitch markers to set yourself up for success
  • Discover how to work with crochet multiples and keep the correct stitch count
  • Add the crossed cable stitch and twisted border stitch to your shawl

Plus, Lee will provide a downloadable pattern and materials list so you can recreate and refine your half-circle shawl as many times as you’d like. 

Whether you already have a few of your own crocheted garments in your regular outfit rotation or your diving into crocheted clothes for the first time, the skills you learn in this class will leave you with a crochet piece you can pass down for generations and the ability to create even more wearable crochet works of art. 

A familiarity with beginner crochet skills including basic stitches and an understanding of crochet materials and crochet pattern reading is required to take this class. If any of this class feels beyond your skill level, check out this beginner’s crochet class with Toni Lipsey or try out another project from Lee’s full Crochet Learning Path. 

Meet Your Teacher

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Lee Sartori

Crochet Designer

Teacher

Lee Sartori is the crochet designer behind CoCo Crochet Lee. She can be seen as a guest host on Seasons 9 -11 of the popular PBS Show Knit and Crochet Now, as well as a cast member of Annie’s Creative Studio where she demonstrates fun crochet skills and patterns. Lee’s passion is designing modern, wearable garments, and adorable amigurumi. Lee lives in Ontario, Canada with her two small children, her amazing husband, and her adorable bunny Neville. Her favorite social platform is Instagram, where she posts fun, and whimsical takes on crochet. Lee is the former Assistant Editor of Happily Hooked Magazine and now focuses on commissioned designs for a number of companies and magazines.

See full profile

Level: Intermediate

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Transcripts

1. Introduction: One of the most rewarding parts about being a crocheer is having something that you made yourself with your own two hands that you can be really proud of and that will last for generations. Crochet is an heirloom skill, so it's just amazing to be able to create long lasting pieces. My name is Li Sartre. I go by Cocoa Crochet Lee. You may have seen my work in any of my four published books. I love working with things that have maybe never been made before. A little touch of whimsy, those are my favorite things to make. Today's class is all about making a beautiful shawl. Now, shawls are one of those classic crochet pieces that you can either wear across your back to stay warm or you can wear it as a scarf, which is actually my favorite way. So we're making a crochet shawl that has some amazing stitches that you may not have used before, including the cable stitch and a really fun border. If you're nervous about starting a shawl, maybe you've never made one before, maybe you've tried to make one and it didn't work out. This class is perfect because we're going to take you step by step through every part. And break it down in a way that is easily understandable and I'm so excited to begin this shaw with you. Let's get started on our beautiful crochet shaw again. 2. Start Your Shawl with Stitch Math: We're going to be working on this beautiful shawl that I have in front of me. There are some really great pauses in the pattern of this shawl to help you learn better. The beginning of the shawl starts with this little chunk here that is nice and smooth. And it's before the cables begin for a reason. It's in order to help you get started with the growth and the math behind this shaw and how those stitches grow in multiples of five. So we're going to begin with this part here and grow center out introducing these cables that are worked with front post stitches and back post stitches in a really interesting way that you're going to love when you see it and that mathematical grouping of five. It continues throughout the body of this shaw. So once you understand how that count is taking place, it'll be really easy for you to be able to recognize mistakes, count back. And we're also going to use stitch markers to help anchor you in case a mistake does happen. You'll be able to tell that it happened between a stitch marking group, so it's going to grow into the body of the shaw with these beautiful cables. And then lastly, we're going to finish off with this really interesting border, which is a combination of double crochet stitches and chains with two contrasting colors that twist into each other. Super fun, very easy crochet stitches to learn, and a border that you're going to want to put on all kinds of crochet items. So let's get started with the center part of our shawl and talk about those beginning parts of our shawl pattern. So you can see here I have a little finished sample of the beginning of the pattern for our shawl. And it just grows really gradually in multiples of five. So we're going to start with this center bit right here and grow outwards. And you can continue building upon that with this part of the lesson. So you're going to start with your crochet hook and your yarn. Leave yourself a little bit of a tail at the beginning. And that's in order to ensure that you'll have the length of tail to weave in your ends. Leader, you don't want those ends popping out on you at any time. So the longer you leave your tail, the more you can weave it in and secure it along the way or even after the shawl is done. You can weave in your ends leader and make sure that everything is nice and polished. So our shawl begins with a chain three. And this shaw grows in multiples of five. Like I mentioned before, at this point you don't have to use stitch wreckers, but you can mark your first stitch if you'd like to. So we're going to chain three, we're going to do five double crochets in the third chain from the hook. If you're counting back from the loop on your hook, it's actually the first chain that you made closest to the slip knot. We're going to do five double crochets in the third chain from the hook. That's the basis for the mathematical growth of our entire. So that's 12, three 4.5 Now you'll notice that I skipped the first two chains of our starting chain. Those two chains don't count as a stitch. For this portion of the pattern, you're only counting the double crochets that we established in the first row. Now we're ready to begin our second row and we're going to chain two to begin throughout this pattern, the chain two does not count as a stitch. We're going to chain two and turn, still working in multiples of five. We're actually going to increase our row count 5-10 now by doing two double crochets in every single stitch across, starting in the first stitch, we're doing two double crochets If you happen to be using line brand tubo yarn like I did for my shawl, which you'll find all of that materials in the materials list. This yarn is so beautiful for a shawl, It's extremely silky, It has wonderful drape. The only thing that I will say is that because it's so silky, it splits very easily. Just take the time to ensure that your crochet stitches are nice and even that you haven't split your yarn and take it slow, it's going to be enjoyable and your shawl is going to be so beautiful using this yarn. So we've gone from five double crochets to ten double crochets. We're going to continue the growth of our shawl in the same way, using multiples of five. So now we're going to go from ten double crochet stitches to 15. We've chained two and we've turned, and again, just as a reminder that chain two at the beginning of each row does not count as a stitch here and throughout. So you're going to do two double crochets in the first stitch and one double crochet in the next stitch. And you're going to repeat that all the way across, two double crochets in the next stitch and one double crochet in the next. This growth pattern is going to continue until we get to the introduction of the cable stitches. When the cable stitches get introduced, the growth rate is going to continue in multiples of five, but the placement is going to be a little bit different. I'm excited to show you because we're going to rely on stitch markers for the remainder of the pattern after that to help guide you. And that way you'll be able to recognize the growth sections in multiples of five for each of the cable rows. Which was really fun now that we've finished the introduction to our shawl and learning how those multiples of five take place in that growth pattern. We're going to take a look at how those cable stitches get introduced into our shawl. I'm so excited for you to take a look at those and how easy they are. 3. Learn the Basic Body Stitches: This is what the first part of our shawl looks like when it's all completed and now we're ready to begin the cable set up. So we're going to be moving from doing strictly double crochets into introducing the half double crochet, which is just a little bit stouter of a stitch. And we're also going to be introducing the front post double crochet, which is the basis of our cable. So we'll show you exactly what that looks like. You will also need some locking stitch markers. I love these really accessible plastic ones. They're perfect for this. You'll need four of them altogether. And I'll show you exactly where they go as the pattern progresses. For this portion, we've chained two again, it doesn't count as a stitch. We're going to do two half double crochets In the first stitch, that's 1.2 We're going to half double crochet in the next seven stitches, that's 123.45 6.7 For this part of the crochet body, you'll notice that the front section and the back section of each of these rows as they progress are only half double crochet. So there's no cable at the beginning or the end. The cables are just in the middle of the shaw. And that's just to give you a little bit of an extra anchor to count your stitches and get comfortable with your numbers as the shaw progresses. Now we're going to begin the part of the repeat that has the step for the introduction of the cables. And this is where those stitch markers are going to come in. So you're going to want to grab those, we're going to do 22 double crochets in the next stitch and you're going to want to grab one of your locking stitch markers and mark the first stitch of those two. Now that you have that first stitch marked of this little section, you can now use that to show yourself where your stitches are. For the first little section of stitches that are only half double crochet. It's a really great way to situate yourself, Make sure you have your count right and make sure that all of your stitches are in the right place. So we're going to continue by starting the build up of the crochet cables. That happens with some stitches called front post double crochets. Now you'll notice that because we're working in turned rows, the orientations of the stitches from the previous row are reversed. If you're a right hand crocheer, normally, if you look at our working row, you'll see that there's a post to the stitch. The top of the stitch rests to the right. The post is here, and the top of the stitch rests to the right hand side of the stitch. Now when we're working our front post, double crochet stitches on the previous row, we're actually working in turned rows which reverses the orientation of the stitch. When you're looking for where we're supposed to begin, you see that our 22 double crochets are in this stitch here. You can see the post of it right underneath. And you can see that the top of the stitch rests to the left. And that's because we are obviously working in turned rows. The orientation is on the other side. That is really important to recognize and to pinpoint when you're doing your further rows for the crochet cables. Because we're working in both the tops of the stitches and around the posts, all in different times. We've done our two half double crochets and we're going to front post double crochet around the next six stitches to set up our cable. Now when we're going to make our front post double crochet, that means that it's just a regular double crochet, something that you've done 1 million times, even in the beginning of this pattern. But the difference is that we're bumping out the post rather than working in the top of the stitch. We're going to yarn over for a double crochet. You're going to look for the next post, which is this stitch here. You're going to insert your hook from front to back, and then around the post and back to the front again. What happens is your post bumps forward, that's what's creating that texture. Now that you've gotten your hook into that position, we're going to yarn over, draw your loop through, and continue your double crochet as normal. Again, it's just a regular double crochet just in a different position. We've done our first front post double crochet. That means that we have five more left to go. You can clearly see the posts of the next five stitches here. Let's go ahead and do those five front post double crochets. We already did one. This is two. That's three. That would be four. 5.6 to finish off the repeat for just this line only. We're going to have double crochet in the next stitch. Now we're not working on the post, we're working back into the tops of the stitches. If you're looking for where that stitch is meant to go, you're looking for the next post of the next stitch. Look for the top of the stitch which is going to rest to the left. That's the best indicator of where to go. A half double crochet in that next stitch, that small repeat is going to go across a few more times. That's where those stitch markers are going to come in again. Let's do that again. We're going to do two, half double crochets in the next stitch and mark the first stitch of those two with a new locking stitch marker. We'll grab that. It's important to use the locking stitch markers because you don't want them falling out and losing your place while you're turning your work and doing more stitches. We've done our two, half double crochets. We're going to do a front post, double crochet across the next six stitches. This is the post of the stitch that has the 22 double crochets. These next six posts are the ones that we're working in. Now that we know how to do a front post double crochet, we can go ahead and do those. 12,345.6 and then a half double crochet. In the next stitch for this row, it's going to get repeated one more time with another locking stitch marker. And then the half double crochets at the end to mirror the beginning. Let's take a look at what it looks like in terms of texture. You can see the beginning part has the half double crochets, which is just a flat texture. You can see where the cables are meant to go by the orientation of those front post stitches that we bumped forward. Now that I've shown you how to do the front post double crochet, I'm going to take a second to show you how to do the back post double crochet before we jump into the actual cross of the cable stitch. The back post double crochet is very similar to the front post. It's just that the orientation of the hook placement is reversed. What's going to happen is on the back side of your work, you're going to get these raised edges on the front side. You're going to get those smooth post stitches that are bumped forward. In order to keep maintaining that look, we have to do a reverse stitch on the next row. A back post, double crochet, looks like this. You're going to yarn over. Instead of inserting your hook from the front to the back, we're actually going to go from the back around the post. Bump that post backwards, inserting your hook onto the other side through the fabric. Then you're going to yarn over, draw up your loop and complete your double crochet. Normally, I'll show you that again a few more times. You're going to yarn over for the back post, double crochet. Instead of going through the front of your fabric, you're actually bringing your hook to the back. Pushing your working yarn backwards. Put your hook in from the back to the front. Push that post of the stitch that we're aiming for backwards with your hook yarn over and draw up your loop and then complete your double crochet. The cable stitches have that base of a front post double crochet and a back post double crochet before the cross. All of these stitches are worked over a repeat of six stitches. No matter where the increases are in your shawl, these six stitches will always line up and be one on top of the other for the entire shaw pattern. If you are finding that you are crocheting and your front post double crochet is landing on a stitch that wasn't previously a post stitch, then you may have lost your way a little bit and you're going to need to use your stitch markers as a guide and count to see where your stitch may have been misplaced. Using those stitch markers as guides along the way into those little sections will break it apart in an easier way to count so that you don't have to count the entire row. If you get really far into your shawl, you can just count a little section at a time and have those little markers to guide you along the way. Now that I've completed those back post double crochets, you can see that the back side of the work, the wrong side of the work, leaves a bit of a ridge. But when I turn the work over, those back post double crochet stitches have mimicked the front post double crochet stitches to create that smooth raised edge that will continue throughout the pattern. 4. Add the Cable Crossover: So now that you've learned how to do the front post double crochet and the back post double crochet, Let's put those skills together and do across for the cable stitch. And we're going to do that with a front post treble crochet. It's just one more yarn over to give you a little bit of extra length for your cable. We're going to skip the first three posts. Work in post 45.6 or the last three posts. You're going to yarn over twice for a front post treble crochet. You're going to insert your hook as if we have been doing those front post crochets the whole time. You're just going to do yarn over and under two loops, three times for a treble crochet, yarn over twice around that post, draw up a loop yarn over, and draw through two loops, three times 12.3 If you've ever done a treble crochet in the past, it's the same stitch just worked around the post rather than in the top of the stitch. Now that we've worked those three front post travel crochets, what happens to the stitches that we left behind those three stitches that we skipped? We're actually going to go ahead and work in those and go back working in front of the stitches that you just made. We're going to yarn over for a front post travel crochet and work in the post number one. Now again, it might feel a little bit uncomfortable to stretch and go that way. I find that it helps. Also, if you hold your yarn overs with your index finger of your working hand as well, you're going to put your hook under that front post, yarn over and drop a loop, and yarn over and draw under two loops three times. We've worked in number one of the skip stitches and we're going to work in number two now, yarn over twice. Insert your hook, a number two of the three skip stitches and complete that front post trouble crochet. Lastly, we're going to do the same thing with the third skip stitch, the only one that doesn't have any work in it yet. You're going to yarn over twice. Insert your hook around post number three and complete that front post treble crochet. You can see now that those stitches have crossed over one another, that's what creates that beautiful cabled fabric. Let's bring in our working shawl. You can see here on our completed shawl, the beautiful cable. When you do the back post double crochets and the back post double crochets, it creates a straight line that pops out. When we do that crossed cable stitch, that's where the cross of the cable happens. And you can see that repeat happening over and over again in our shaw. Now that you've seen the criss cross, we're ready to continue on the body of our shawl. I've completed the cross of those cable stitches and we're back to a row where we're doing back post double crochets. We've run into the section of cable with those front post trouble crochets that criss cross in front of one another. When you're looking at the back side of that cross, it can look a little bit jumbled. There's a really great way of keeping track of where your back post double crochet stitches are meant to go. That's by not looking at the posts of the stitches, it's by looking at the tops of the stitches. If you tilt your piece towards your face, you'll be able to see that the tops of the stitches, although they're crossed, will all line up in a row. And you'll be able to see the sideways V of the top of each of these stitches. All six of them, if you think about it, that way you can locate the V of the stitch, the top of the stitch, and from there, locate the post of the stitch that we're working in next and think about them as being in lined that way. Rather than being crossed and mixed up, we're re orientating them to be straight again. With this row we're going to work back post double crochets across these six crossed treble crochets from our cable row. Just like before we're yarning over, look for the top of that stitch. Once you locate the top of the stitch, you can find the bottom of the stitch, the post, and you're going to push it back for a back post, double crochet yarn over. Draw up your loop and complete that double crochet. Where's the next one? You're going to locate the next top of your stitch, which is right here. That's number two. You're going to yarn over, bump that post backwards for a back post, double crochet yarn over, and bring up that loop and finish your double crochet post Number three, look for the top of the stitch which is right here. You're going to back post double crochet that one as well. The first three are usually the trickiest to find because they are stretched. The last three are a little bit easier. That's nice. With the last three, you can actually see the posts of them as well as the tops of the stitches. You can see the next top of the stitches here, and the post is here under my thumb. We're going to back post the last three. That's one, that's 2.3 or if you're thinking about them in sections of six stitches, it would be 45.6 for the last three. Then you would just continue your row as indicated in the pattern. If we turn our work around, you'll see that the back post double crochets had a straightening effect on that cable to create a base for our next couple of rows. This was one example of the crochet cable and one example of the criss cross. But you're going to keep working your rows over and over again for the number of repeats indicated in the written pattern. And let's take a look at what happens when you combine those repeats with that one crossed cable section into the body of the shaw, you end up with a beautiful fabric that looks like a twisted knit cable. It's so fun to do and not as scary as it seems with that one crossed row. What's going to happen is your cable is going to build on top of itself. All of those six stitches will always line up and remain the same every time that you go back and forth across them with those post stitches. Now if you are keeping track with your stitch markers, you're going to set yourself up for success. Because the front section and the back section are going to be those easy half double crochet stitches. Super flat, very easy to count. A great way to keep track of how many stitches you're supposed to have in your row and then you can apply that into the cable sections, those three cable sections. And make sure that your stitch count is maintained throughout the body of your shawl. Now that we've completed the body of our shawl, there's so many iconic ways to finish off a shawl, but all of them come to a head with a fun border. 5. Finish With a Border: If you've seen crochet shawls before, or even knitted shawls, one of the first things that you will notice about them is they have a body which has usually something really interesting going on like our crochet cables, but the party is really in the border. And so it's so fun to be able to pick up a new skill with such a short amount of room because a crochet border can happen in as little as two rows and go on to be as many as up to ten to 15 rows. There can be lace, there can be lots of texture. It's basically just bring the fun around the edge of your shawl. This shaw is no exception. The difference here is the crochet stitches involved in this border. Although they look more complicated, they're actually really easy. It's a combination of two double crochets and a chain eight. So if you know how to double crochet, which we have already done in our shawl and you can chain, then you're ready to go. The other thing that you will need is two contrasting colors, because that's what makes these twisted stitches really pop. The fiddly part of this section is that the colors will get twisted up. You will have to continuously adjust the placement of your balls of yarn in order to avoid a tangled mess. So as long as you're okay with swapping out the two different balls of yarn in placement as you crochet, you're going to be perfectly fine. So let's get started on the border. The first thing that you're going to notice about the border of this shawl is that it rests on a base of one of the contrasting colors. And that's just to give it a little bit more height to our crochet border, because this actual line is only one line and it doesn't add a lot of length to the edge of your shawl by bumping it out with a row of double crochets and then a row of single crochets, It just kind of adds to the illusion that this is all part of the border and that it has a little bit more height to it. While there are a few rows of the shaw border, they're very simple rows and the action all happens in the final row with these twisted stitches. Let's take a look at how they begin. What's going to happen in this row is we're going to do two double crochets in your first contrasting color on the edge of your work and chain eight, you're going to slip stitch with your next color on the top of the first double crochet and chain eight. You're going to skip two stitches on the body of the shawl and do two double crochets, chain eight. Let's take a look on how that actually happens when you put it into work. You can see here that this is a little bit along the way of our border. We have our two double crochets made of our contrasting color with the chain eight, ready to go. This one also has two double crochets on the row with two skip stitches and a chain eight going on as well. We're dropping this silver color. Make sure that when you drop your stitch that you leave it a little bit long. The loop, make sure that the loop is drawn up to a little bit of a height because you don't want it to come undone when dropping it. We're going to make that loop a little taller. And I'll show you how that happens as well. We've picked up our stitch and we're going to do two double crochets in the next two stitches. After we skip the last of these set of double crochets right here in the silver we have our two silver crochets. We're going to skip two and do two double crochets in the gray. That's 1.2 Now here's where we make the chain. You're going to chain 81,234,567.8, And on that eighth pull through, draw that loop up so that we can drop it and we won't lose it. We can pick it back up after. That's what's going to happen. Now with the silver, you're going to drop the gray. Pick up the silver with that long loop, get that ready to work. Now that we're ready to work our silver, two double crochets. The gray is going to move forward on our work onto the right side that these two chain twines are going to cross each other. We're skipping the next two stitches and we're going to do two double crochets in the next two. That's 1.2 Here's where we chain eight with the silver 1,234,567.8, on that eighth chain. Make sure you draw that loop up high so that you don't lose your stitch. You can see already that what happened was we trapped the gray working yarn the front of the fabric. By doing so, when we pick it up with our working loop and get ready to crochet again, it's already twisted all on its own. Just by dropping your work and letting it rest on a certain side, you can get a twist on your fabric. Now we're going to bring the silver forward to rest on the front side of our work so that these will twist as well. We're skipping two stitches and double crocheting in the last two with our gray. That's 1.2 The gray is now at the end of the row. So you're okay to fasten off on this one. We're going to pick up the silver at the front of our work. There's no more stitches to double crochet in. We're just going to secure that chain to the top of the last double crochet, and that's it. You can fasten off on this one as well. What happens is by moving the unworked yarn to the front of your work and picking up the working yarn, you've created a twisted fabric and it creates such a fun border. It's very exciting. 6. Final Thoughts: Okay guys, it's time to celebrate. You've completed a shawl and a beautiful one. At that, there's a lot going on in this shawl and it is so fun to learn all of these different techniques. We started from the middle, working in a multiple of five, and then we learned how to do a cable stitch with front post double crochets, back post double crochets, and even front post treble crochet. And it turned into a beautiful shawl body that has almost like a sunshine ray coming out of it. I like to think, I think it's so fun. I can't wait to see yours. And especially, I'm excited to see your twisted borders and what colors you choose. So just be sure to share your finished photos on the project gallery attached to this class. And I will be able to see them. Skillshare will be able to see them and we're all going to celebrate together. Thank you so much for joining me for this Skillshare class. Happy crocheting.