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.