As a designer, I’m always searching for ways to achieve my vision and turn my idea into stitches. When it is all seamless and comes together perfectly it is like a dream. Sometimes I have to spend hours working on perfecting something new only in my mind. One of those times, over many of those hours is how I came up with this trick to always get the perfect shape for crochet crescent and semi-circle shawls.

Sometimes when I am designing, it is about using existing methods and techniques that I have learned and incorporating them into my vision. Other times it is about coming up with something brand new (or new to me) creating my own way to make string into my vision. While working on crescent shawl designs in crochet, I discovered that nothing in my library of stitches and techniques was giving me the exact starting shape I wanted.

So I came up with my own, as I often do.

This method can easily be tweaked to work for semi circles or crescent shape shawls. Follow these steps for the first 2 rows and see the video below.

Using this technique will take some getting used to I know. But once yo get the hang of it your whole crochet shawl life will CHANGE FOREVER! Truly - I get the look and shape I want every single time using this method.

Some great patterns to make using this method:

Eastbound Crochet Shawl

Chrysalis County Butterfly Shawl

Dragon County Shawl

So what is the magic trick? It all happens in the first TWO ROWS of the shawl! Yup. Those first two rows will set the course of the entire shawl. In this method, BOTH of your first two rows will be right side (RS) rows for patterns that call for a right side (RS) wrong side (WS. Watch the video below after reading these instructions.

To begin:

Row 1: fhdc x 12 (or number of stitches called for by the pattern), then ch 1 (ch 1 does NOT act as a stitch)

DO NOT TURN YOUR WORK. You will keep going and only turn your work 90 degrees, then 90 degrees again to come back across the base of the fhdc row, not the top of the row! In other words, you will be coming back across the foundation side!

Row 2: ch 2 (does NOT act as a stitch); 3 hdc in the last stitch of the fhdc row, 2 hdc in each stitch across to last stitch, 3 hdc in the last stitch (being sure to go into the middle of that last stitch as shown in the video.

Then voila! keep going with your pattern and create perfectly shaped and easy to block crescent shawls that you will love.

And don’t forget to block your shawl! See my Crochet Shawl Blocking Tips here.