The first shawls I made using the Corris effect had wavelike patterns. After these more abstract experiments, I wanted to apply the Corris effect to patterns with motifs such as flowers and stars. In my personal opinion, these motifs look best when they have a certain symmetry to them. However, when applying the Corris effect to a symmetric twill motif, the symmetry gets lost. To overcome this, I changed the rules of the Corris effect up a bit.

A while ago, I combined two of my favorite things in a handwoven shawl – stars and rainbows. I love weaving star-shaped motifs and using rainbow colors to do so adds to the enjoyment. The weather in June has been quite warm thus-far, so I have not worn the shawl much. Still, given that we are celebrating June as Pride Month this year, I thought it would be nice to share the shawl with you.

There are quite some choices to make when designing a shawl: weave structure, design, yarn and color. Sometimes, most of these ingredients are lying around and all I need to do is combine them. This was the case for the shawl I made for my husband.

In my three-part blog series for Handwoven, I explain how I approach designing and weaving for publication. This made me reminisce about creating my first weaving pattern.

Since I started handcrafting, I have become increasingly aware of my color preferences. I gravitate towards pink in particular whenever I find myself in a yarn store. Recently, I decided to dye my own pink coat and matching yarn.