Festival of Flowers Shawl

I love designing crochet projects that use different shaped blocks to create blankets. My Persian Tiles design, for example is made using octagons and squares. Delft, The Blue House, Climbing Rose Wrap and Frida's Flowers are made using hexagons and Royal Garden is created by working diamond and triangle shapes. Creating tessellating blocks is something I really enjoy, but as a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to the finished shape of my projects, I often end up designing half and quarter motifs to ensure that they can have (at least two) straight edges. It is a personal preference of course, and I know many designers who like their projects to have shaped edges created by the motif contours, but too many wavy edges, or oddly shaped borders don’t really sit well with me.

​My most recent CAL projects (The Fruit Garden, Indigo Dreams and Spirit of Flora) have all been based on square shapes. Making projects using squares means that crocheters can easily adapt a design to suit them. They can make it bigger or smaller, square or rectangular by making just a few simple changes to my plan and differences in tension (compared to my pattern) are not the end of the world. 

​When designing my most recent CAL, Spirit of Flora, I thought it would be good to create a half motif that would enable crocheters to make either triangular projects, such as shawls, or a square blanket with a fancy edge, made from the half motifs. The Pair of Roses motif leant itself really well to also becoming a half motif and I am really pleased with how it turned out. 

You can find a free download document that contains guidance on how to make the Festival of Flowers shawl by clicking on the image above and you can find more information about the Spirit of Flora collection by following this link. You will need three of the Spirit of Flora patterns to make the shawl - they are Leaf Trellis, Evelyn and the Pair of Roses motif, which also includes the half motif instructions. 

I think it would be great to see the shawl made in alternative shades and you could always choose two other motifs to accompany the Rose edging pieces instead of those I have used. Or, if you want to make something a little plainer, you could use one of the free plain motifs for the main part of the shawl and just use the Half Pair of Roses motif for the edging? 

I look forward to seeing what you can come up with!