Are you fed up of your shawls falling off your shoulders?

Maybe you want an alternative to a shawl pin or cuff to secure your shawl around your neck?

I have a very simple solution to keep your knitted and crocheted shawls securely draped around your neck.

The Slipping Shawl Solution

The solution is a small tab (knitted or crocheted) that you can sew directly onto the wrong side of your shawl. It is hidden and creates a loop to feed the thinnest end of your shawl through.

It keeps your shawl secured and still allows it to drape and be positioned to whatever way you want to wear it.

It doesn’t matter if you use a different yarn weight or colour, the tab is sewn onto the wrong side and will never be seen.

How to Crochet The Shawl Tab

With whatever yarn you have to hand and a corresponding hook size, leave a 15cm/ 6″ tail for sewing onto shawl and make 15ch.

If your shawl is chunky, you may want to use a thicker yarn for the tab of chain more stitches at the beginning. Likewise, for a finer shawl, a thinner yarn with fewer stitches might work better.

Row 1: starting dc (US Starting sc) in first ch from hook, dc (US sc) in each ch to end, turn. 15 sts

Rows 2-4: Starting dc (US Starting sc), dc (US sc) to end, turn. At end of Row 4, cut yarn and fasten off leaving a 15cm/ 6″ tail for sewing onto shawl.

How to Knit The Shawl Tab

With whatever yarn you have to hand and the corresponding needle size, leave a 15cm/ 6″ tail for sewing onto shawl and cast on 15 sts.

If your shawl is chunky, you may want to use a thicker yarn for the tab of cast on more stitches. Likewise, for a finer shawl, a thinner yarn with fewer stitches might work better.

Rows 1-5: K15.

Cast off leaving a 15cm/ 6″ tail for sewing onto shawl.

How to Attach The Shawl Tab

Work out which way you are most likely to wear your shawl and, therefore, which is the WS that the tab is to be sewn on to.

Work out where is best to sew the tab onto your shawl. Approximately 1cm down from the top of the shawl and 10-15cm along from the shortest side is a good rule of thumb.

You can see that this is where I have sewn the tab for my crocheted Omni Shawl, but that for the knitted shawl the placement needs to be further along because the increases are less pronounced and the point needs to come over my shoulder.

You can safety pin the tab to the shawl to test the placement of it before sewing.

Sew the first short edge of your tab onto your shawl making sure that the sewn stitches don’t show on the right side of the shawl.

Sew down the other short edge of the tab, creating a bit of extra room on the loop (keep it a little loose when you sew it on). This will stop the shawl from looking puckered when you feed the shawl tail through and wear it.

Let’s Be Social

I am usually found in these online places, or you can join my newsletter where I talk about all things yarn, crochet and knitting:

• YouTube crafting podcast and crochet/ knit tutorials– @faydhdesigns
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