Essential Guide to Shawl Shapes: Techniques and Creative Construction

Wearing shawls is de rigueur at every fiber fest and knit night these days. With the diverse styles, shapes, and constructions out there, the humble shawl has been imagined and reimagined a thousand ways. They are so fun to knit! And shawls provide an opportunity to use a precious or unusual yarn and to play with lace, texture, and creative construction methods.

What is your favorite shawl shape? I love a long, shallow triangle that can be wrapped like a scarf around the neck. But narrowing down to just triangles isn’t enough—because triangular shawls can be knitted a multitude of ways—top-down, side to side, bottom up, and so on. The same is true for other shapes.

What do shape and knitting direction mean for a shawl? Let’s take a look at some examples in the Farm & Fiber Knits library.

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Knitting a Triangular Shawl

One of the most common modern shawl shapes, the triangle requires shaping in pattern. This takes clever design work.

The Top-Down Triangle

A super-clever construction method here is the top-down triangle, which is worked from a few stitches starting at the top, long edge of the triangle. Here are two examples worked this way: The Chameleon Shawl and Coco’s Wrap. (Find links for all the patterns at the bottom of the page.)