My version of “On the Town Shawl”

I love crocheting but because of skin allergies, I am only able to work with 100% cotton yarn.  It took me a while to get past just making dishcloths and a lot of that was learning what patterns cotton yarn would work with and how to modify patterns to make them “cotton friendly”.  Cotton yarn is lovely to use, but when used in some patterns, it does not have the same elasticity that synthetic yarns have.  I have learned that simply increasing the hook size can usually help with that, but the pattern also needs to have a lot of open space if it is an item that should be able to drape nicely.

Before Mother’s Day this year I knew that I wanted to make shawls for my mother and for my mother-in-law.  So I went searching for patterns … I found a pattern on redheart.com for “On the Town Shawl” (Pattern for On The Town Shawl) and fell in love with the edging immediately.  And I knew just the yarn that I wanted to use for my mother-in-law.  And so I went about modifying it to work better with my yarn choice and crocheted it right up 🙂

I love the subtle color changes of the self-striping yarn that I used and I feel that the solid coral really makes the border pop.  So here’s the details on what I did …

Yarn used:  Bernat Handicrafter Cotton – for the body of the shawl, I used 7 x 42.5g balls of self-striping yarn and for the edging/borders, I used 2 x 50g balls of solid color.

Hook used: 6.5mm (for body) and 6.00mm (for edging and border)

Modifications to pattern:  

• For the V-st, I used (dc, ch2, dc) instead of (tr, ch2, tr).  I personally find that tr stitches can lose their definition easily in cotton yarn.
  • NOTE:  If you also choose to make this change, you will decrease your turning chain by one, as it is written for tr, not dc.
• For the wrap body, I chained 57 (the pattern setup is in multiples of 3 sts, plus an additional 2 sts for a total of 56 working stitches + 1 turning sc) instead of 66.
  • NOTE:  I used the larger hook size for the shawl body only.
• When I completed the shawl, using the solid color and the smaller hook size, I worked two rows of single crochet along the perimeter of the shawl, spacing my sc evenly along the edge.
• For the edging, I made 5 total patterns.  I then sc across the top of the edging ends with the same number of stitches as the shawl ends, to make the seam where they are sewn on the body of the shawl appear more seamless.

Do you work with 100% cotton yarn for larger projects?  What are some of your favorite patterns?  I’d love to see them!

See the beauty in the dawn.

Love,
Wendy