Johanna’S TOP TIPS FOR the perfect shawl

think that there was some planned mathematical wizardry that happened but that’s not always the case. She often just takes a stitch that she loves and builds from there. When it comes to shaping of shawls Johanna just simply lets the maths lead her. If the mathematical repetition of a stitch or pattern looks best as a triangle, then she makes the shawl into a triangle. It’s as simple as that and makes perfect sense. Johanna almost apologised to me for not really having a specific formula to designing, saying that she just sits down with yarn and hook to experiment and makes ‘what comes to me’. Often in life I think people are unaware of the extent of the talent they have – to be able to express these designs in the way Johanna does is mind-blowing!

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE DRAPE

Johanna was so clear about just how important achieving the right shawl drape is and how a few simple tweaks can dramatically improve your project and take it to the next level. The balance with shawl making is wanting a beautiful drape whilst maintaining stitch definition. Johanna advises to try a few different hook sizes with the yarn you’re going to use to see which gives the best result. Yes folks, you heard it right, not only do you need to do a swatch, you need to do a few! This will absolutely transform your work and guarantee a fabulous shawl to wow everyone with that you are beyond proud of. If they turn out anything near as perfect as Johanna’s shawls do, I’d say it’s worth a swatch or two!

Achieving the right shawl drape is very important

Written by Hannah Cross More of Johanna’s patterns and inspiration can be found at www.mojicrochet.se