How to Block Your New Lace Shawl

Let me imagine a scenario to see if you’ve been there too:

You’re finishing up a knitting project. A lovely lace shawl, knit with a beautifully soft merino wool. Fingering weight, of course, to make it look delicate, and also to make it take quite a lot of time to knit! You won your game of yarn chicken, with only a few yards left from your 400+ yard skein. You bind off the last stitch, and the shawl falls into your lap, finally complete! You’re pumped! It’s done! You lift it up, ready to bask in its glory–

WTF. It looks like a tangle of wooly spaghetti.

But you used the best wool! You gave it so much love and attention! You didn’t throw it in the trash when you noticed that dropped stitch 20 rows back, you missed exciting moments in sportsball games (“What happened, what happened?” as the crowd goes wild.) You forgot all about your tea as it grew cold and neglected. You missed out on snuggles with your pup, cat, or human.

How could this project do that to you?

Guess what. We’ve all been here. Go ahead, reheat your tea, settle in with your cat, and lets talk about Blocking, where I’ll show you how to get from there to here:

What is “blocking” and why should I care?

Blocking is a great word, with a hundred different meanings. Blocking your kid from running out on a busy street? Excellent. Blocking your ex’s phone number after repeated booty calls? Absolutely keep that up. Blocking in knitting? An essential part of the finishing process, particularly for projects knit with natural fibers like wool.

When we talk about blocking in knitting, we simply mean that we’re going to wet or steam our finished item, and lay it out flat in the shape we want it to stay in. The moisture relaxes the individual wool fibers, and when they dry, they’ll remain pretty much in the same position that you laid them out in. Blocking helps to even out your stitches, and helps to really add a finished look to your piece. And with wet blocking in particular, what we’re going to do here, we also have the added benefit of using wool-wash to soften your wool even more.

But wait–doesn’t wool shrink in the wash?

Well…it can. In a process known as felting (or sometimes fulling)–which can be used be used for awesome effect–wool can experience a shock which causes all the little fibers to lock up together, causing what we think of as shrinkage, but the wool thinks of as protecting its sheep.

Which is why we’re going use LUKEWARM water to fill the basin that we’re going to use. Water that feels slightly cool, or slightly warm to your skin is perfect. And we’re going to use a dollop of no-rinse wool wash, like Soak or Eucalan, so that we can do even more to avoid the risk of shocking the wool fibers.

So what exactly do I need for all this?

• A Basin, Pot, or Sink large enough to easily hold several quarts of water and your finished shawl.
• Soak or Eucalan No-Rinse Wool Wash–Both come in scented and unscented varieties. I’m partial to soak because I love their scents, but whichever you can find for the price and scent you like is the best one for you!
• Pins–Steel are best because they’re rust resistant, but if you already have some regular straight sewing pins, those will work perfectly.
• Blocking Wires–These are not 100% necessary, but I’ll tell you what–If you enjoy knitting and you think you’re going to keep knitting things with straight edges like shawls, scarves, cowls, or blankets, these will save a lot of time and make your edges look much smoother than pins alone.
• Interlocking Blocking Boards–They make these so fancy now, with the gridlines every inch! They pack away small into their tidy little case and they’re great. But I’m cheap when I can be, so my secret is I don’t use these ones: I use 2′ x 2′ interlocking gym flooring, and I got mine at Ocean State Job Lot for like $8 ten years ago and they’re holding up just fine. If you have a Job Lots, Big Lots, Ollies, or other type of discount retailer, you should be able to find them there.
• Tape Measure–anything you have is perfect. I lose these constantly so I buy them in bulk periodically lol
• A clean old bath towel–there may be some dye transfer, so don’t choose your favorite white guest towels for this.

(I included some amazon affiliate links so you can see what I’m talking about. If you make a purchase, I may earn a small commission at no cost to you. Every product listed I definitely believe will make your life easier, whether you purchase through amazon, your local yarn store, or somewhere else entirely.)

Ok, I have all my stuff, now what?

This isn’t a real step, but before you start any of this stuff…take a picture of your shawl. I want you to remember how it looked in its “before” stage. Lay it out, get a couple of angles, wrap it around your neck. You’ll appreciate this later on.

For the real process, add some lukewarm water to your basin, with about a teaspoon sized dollop of wool wash. Fill it up enough so that when you dunk your shawl, it will fully submerge without being smooshed. Grab your shawl and dunk it in. You may need to push it back down a couple of times as the air releases to the top, but after a moment or two, it will be happy to chill under the water. Now, walk away for 15 minutes. Resist the urge to wring it out or really agitate it. It’s taking a bath, let it relax! Remember, too much agitation can lead to shrinkage, and we don’t want that!

While your knitting is soaking, lay out your towel on a flat surface. If your kitchen table is uncluttered enough, that’s the perfect place. Mine is not. Shocking. Get your other tools handy so that you don’t have to go scrambling for them like I always have to do.

The time has come.

15 minutes have passed, and your shawl is ready. Go ahead and lug it out of the water. Don’t worry too much about the dye that may have released into the water–the more saturated the color, the more likely that is to happen. Gently squeeze some of the excess water out of the shawl. Squeeze, drip, release, squeeze, drip, release. DO NOT wring it out or twist it aggressively. Once it’s not actively dripping anymore, you’re good.

Lay your shawl out on the prepared table, in as close to one layer as you can manage, tucking corners or long edges in where you need to. Then go ahead and roll it up like an enchilada, from short end to short end, until the shawl is safely encased in the towel.

Now lay your little enchilada on a hard surface floor and walk across that towel several times like you’re Simone Biles on the balance beam! Don’t worry, your knitting is safe and sound inside the towel, and you want to press as much extra water out as you can.

Where should I set up my blocking boards?

Several factors come into play here. The blocking boards are going to need to be assembled in such a way that you can stretch your entire shawl out, so you’ll need a surface that can support that. Kitchen or dining room tables can be great for that if you have one large enough.

Another factor is the safety of your piece and the safety of the other inhabitants of your house. You don’t want pets or kids to pull out pins, and you don’t want a bumbling roommate to trip or spill something on your new shawl. If you have a dedicated craft space behind a closed door, that’s probably the best option.

I’m fortunate enough to have a second bedroom that’s a “craft” room (“craft” in this instance meaning a catch-all space for all the stuff we don’t know what to do with in the rest of the house lol). I can keep the cats out with the door, and my fiancé out by blasting Spice Girls music while I work (sorry honey!). It can hang out until it dries, and no one besides me will bother it much.

Ok, my kitchen table is fine. Can we get on with this?

Go ahead and lay out your blocking boards into a shape that will fit your shawl. Grab your blocking wires, and beginning with the longest edge of your piece (which I’ll call the “top” of my triangle shawl), begin to thread one of the wires along edge, two or three stitches in from the edge, weaving back and forth through the fabric every inch or. My personal preference is two stitches in, but this pattern has an eyelet border in one from the edge, so that’s what I’ll use.

Your edge might be longer than the length of your blocking wires, and that’s completely ok. When you get towards the end of the first wire, just overlap the two wires for 2 inches or so before weaving with the second wire. Repeat if you need with a third wire. You want to leave some space on both ends of each wire anyways, to make room for stretching.

Repeat this step with any other straight edges you might have. Make sure the corners where the wires poke out meet in the same place for a crisp point.

Right but when do we do the stretching bit?

Here’s the fun part. Gently coax your shawl to stretch and lay flat along the wires. Carefully spread the fabric along the length of the wires, don’t let it fall off the ends. (If you do, don’t panic, just rethread it!) My strategy here was to work from the bottom corner outwards. When the fabric begins to resemble what I’d like the finished project to look like, I’ll start adding some pins. Working from the corner out, smoothing and spreading and gently stretching the shawl with me as I go, I’ll add a pin every 3 or 4 inches right below the wire. Take extra care at the corners to add a few support pins, since you’ll be putting strain there as you work along the other edges. Keep gently stretching the piece out as you move along the other edges, pinning as before.

If your shawl is symmetrical, use your tape measure to center the point. If you make sure each shorter edge is the same length, the point should follow. My shawl is asymmetrical, so I just sort of eyeballed it until it looked right to me. Now we wait.

What the heck do you mean “now we wait”? Will this ever be done?

You’re so close, and your persistence will be rewarded, young grasshopper. We just have to wait for your shawl to dry. There’s not a lot you can do to speed this up besides turning on a ceiling fan or something. You did the hard work, now you get to impatiently wait, probably until tomorrow, if it’s November and you live in New England. If you live in Arizona, maybe it’ll be dry in 45 minutes, what do I know?

Once it’s DRY–not mostly dry, not slightly damp, not moist–it’s ready. Remove all of your pins from the piece. Take a quick picture or two of it laid out.

This step always makes me feel like a magician: One by one, slide the wires out of the shawl. Voila! Your shawl! It will be laying there, delicate and airy and flat, no longer a ball of wooly spaghetti. It’s ready to be adored, to be photographed, and most importantly to be worn proudly as the stunning piece of art that it is!

FAQ

What pattern did you use?

I used the free pattern Pyropa by Susanna IC. I loved everything about it except the fact that there’s only one edging stitch around the whole piece. I would have preferred 2 or even 3, since it was a fingering weight knit at a loose gauge.

What yarn did you use?

I used a 600 yard “Shawl Length” Skein of Superwash Merino dyed by Wendy’s Wonders in the Hydrangea Bouquet Colorway. It’s SO pretty. This pattern really lends itself well to a gradient I found.

What if my project is made out of acrylic yarn?

Come with me, my friend, over to this post where we talk about how to steam block acrylic!

What are the final measurements?

68″ Long, 45″ Wide. Perfect for me to wrap once around my neck and have a nice tail on each end and some good drape.

This was your first blog post: How does it feel to have finally finished?

I’ll let you know once it actually feels finished lol. For now I imagine I’ll keep coming back to tweak it for ages!