Contains:
- Knitting pattern for beaded, braided shawl that mimics a fabergé egg
- Instructions for mini sample version/swatch included
- Suitable for intermediate to advanced knitters
Materials you need at home:
- Two colors of fingering weight yarn with good contrast. For the kerchief size, you will need 185 m of the ruffle/overlay color and 205 m of the background color for a total of 390 m. For the medium shawl size, you will need 270 m of the ruffle/overlay color and 315 m of the background color for a total of 585 m. For the large shawl size, you will need 375 m of the ruffle/overlay color and 385 m of the background color for a total of 760 m
- 4.0 mm/US 6 needles, or size needed to obtain gauge
- Needles one size smaller than gauge needles
- Size 6/0 seed beads: 174 for the kerchief size, 312 for the medium shawl size, or 468 for the large shawl size, as well as 9 for the swatch
- Your favorite tool for adding beads (tiny crochet hook or dental floss)
- Stitch markers
- Tapestry needle for weaving in ends
I fell in love with the Scale Quilting stitch a dozen years ago when I was working on a Learn-to-Knit Afghan from Barbara Walker’s book of the same name. Now, 12 years, many afghans, shawls, and sweaters later, I’ve gone back to it to make a feminine, two-color shawl. As soon as I thought of adding beads, I knew what the name of the design needed to be!
Techniques: decreasing, horizontal braid, slipped stitches, beading. None of them are difficult, but some are a bit fiddly and any counting errors will show up, so it is not mindless knitting!
Instructions are included for a small swatch that uses all the stitch patterns so that you can familiarize yourself with the techniques and try out your color choices. You need a certain amount of contrast for the overlay to show up. Please swatch!!! You really don’t want to decide you aren’t happy with your colors or their placement after knitting the ruffle and the first braid!
This shawl is knit from the bottom up, so you get the slow part (the ruffle) over with while you’re still excited about knitting it. The overlay section is surprisingly quick, even with the beads, because you slip so many stitches without working them.
Sizes: kerchief (96.5 cm across and 40.5 cm deep), medium shawl (142 cm across and 58.5 cm deep), and large shawl (155 cm across and 66 cm deep)
Gauge: 21 stitches to 10 cm in both the slipped stitch pattern and the textured eyelet pattern, after blocking. Gauge is not critical but will affect the size of your finished project and the meterage required
Note: Though conversions to the metric system have been made on this page for your convenience, the pattern itself uses American measurements.
Laura Aylor
If ‘knitting designer’ had been one of the job choices for those aptitude tests they give you in high school, I wouldn’t have spent so many years trying to decide what I wanted to be when I grew up. My best subject in high school was math; my best classes in college were logic, drawing, and a commercial art class. After careers in computer programming/analysis and child-rearing, knit design snuck up on me, but I think it’s the perfect use of my odd skill set! I love every step of the process, from figuring out how to actually make what I’ve envisioned to putting the finishing touches on a pattern, not to mention all the knitting that comes in between!
I also love reading and hiking and spending time on Brier Island in Nova Scotia every summer.