Twisp of Fate

A friend of mine showed me a cool way of draping my new shawls last week, and I thought I would share it.  Often when you just wrap a shawl around your shoulders, you have to hold the ends with your arms, or pin it in some way.  It doesn’t want to hang down straight or stay on your shoulders all by itself!  This method achieves that, if you are just wearing it as a large scarf, not wrapped around you for warmth.

Start by folding the shawl in half across the middle:

Now draw the bottom edges away from each other.  The goal is to create a fold that is on the bias of the fabric.  You may have to play around with how much of an angle you want:

Now hang it around your shoulders, so the crossed edges are against your neck and the bias fold is hanging across your shoulders.  This is the tricky part.  On a person, we could get the bias fold to run straight across the back.  On the manniken, I had to drape it a little differently, but it still looks nice.

Now the ends hang down straight in front.  On these shawls, it also shows off the 2 sides of fabric nicely!

You could do this with a narrower scarf as well, and any kind of shawl or scarf – not just handwoven.  I also tried putting it on with the bias fold up against my neck and the crossed edges hanging below towards my shoulder blades.  You can make a kind of “shawl collar” this way, and the ends still hang down straight in front.  So play around with it and see what you think!