I knit my first shawl design! My Trinity Brioche Shawl turned out great and I am super proud! I learned a lot through knitting this shawl and I’m excited to share my thoughts on the Westknits Workshop I took, my shawl inspiration, and the lessons I learned. Keep reading for my Trinity Brioche Shawl knitting experience:
Westknits Workshop
I recently watched the Top-Down Shawl Design workshop by Westknits, and I was inspired to attempt to knit my own shawl design.
I love shawls that use multiple colors, have lots of unique stitch patterns, and have a beautiful border. My favorite shawl is the Fantastitch by Stephen West. It uses 7 colors and has so many fun stitch patterns. The border is beautiful and it’s so much fun to knit. The Fantastitch is also the first shawl I ever knit, so it just feels extra special to me. So after taking the Westknits Workshop, I hoped to knit my own multi-color sampler-type shawl.
Workshop Information
The Top-Down Shawl Design Westknits Workshop is a 3+ hour course that teaches how to design top-down triangles, semi-circles, and other geometric shawl shapes. There is a pdf download with all the shaping recipes. Then the course goes into some tips on customizing the shawl edges/spine and border. There are lessons on increasing, incorporating stitch patterns, and sketching. And then the course ends with lessons on swatching, different yarn types, blocking, and some top tips.
The course is 50 euros and is hosted on thinkific. So when you buy the course, you can watch the lessons at your own pace and rewatch them whenever you want.
Workshop Review
I debated a long time before buying this workshop. I love Westknits patterns and I knew that Stephen is a great teacher from watching his YouTube tutorials, so I felt confident that I would get value from the workshop. But from watching the trailer video, it seemed like this course was intended for beginner-level knitters.
I have been knitting for a little while now and I feel I’ve knit some complex patterns. And I’ve also dabbled in making heavy modifications to different patterns so I felt like I was more of a mid-level knitter. But I still thought I would enjoy the workshop, so I finally decided to buy it during a sale.
First Watch vs Practical Application
I watched the entire course in one sitting and took notes along the way. My initial reaction was that the course was indeed very beginner-friendly. For example, I felt like a lot of time was spent on teaching how to do M1L/M1R, M1, or YO increases when walking through the Top-Down Triangle lesson. This is the first lesson and also the longest lesson in the course. I know how to do all those different types of increases, so this initial lesson felt a little slow-paced because of the repetition in teaching the actual increase techniques. Looking back, now having knit my own shawl, I see how learning and understanding increases is a core foundational lesson. So I understand why the course is structured that way, I just wish knowing how to do the increases was a prerequisite.
The most valuable lesson for me was in the Top-Down Semi-Circle lesson. After learning about how to maintain symmetry and shaping with increases, I was excited to apply what I’d learned! I recently knit the Bubbly Blossoms Shawl, but I wanted to add another bubble stitch section. I applied the techniques I learned from the workshop to maintain the semi-circular shaping while adding my new section.
Overall I enjoyed the Top-Down Shawl Design Workshop, and after watching the first time, I felt inspired to attempt my first shawl. But it wasn’t until after I knit this Trinity Brioche shawl that I really appreciated all the value in the workshop. So many of the challenges or frustrations I experienced while knitting my shawl had been addressed in the workshop. Stephen’s thought process and tips really clicked for me with practical application and I’m even more excited to knit more designs now.
Trinity Brioche Shawl
I had spent a little time trying to sketch out a design or a shape that I thought was cool, but it wasn’t looking how I wanted and I started to feel discouraged. So I went to Ravelry to get inspiration, and began looking at patterns I liked or that used colors I liked.
Inspiration + Planning
I loved the look and colors of the Bubbles & Brioche Shawl by Stephen West. The shawl sample uses black and white brioche or striped sections, and contrasts them with colorful bubble stitch stripes. I thought it looked really cool and I wanted to try to make it my own without just swapping stitch patterns like I mostly did with my Fantastitch Combination Shawl.
So to get started, I gathered my colors. I had a rainbow in stash that I was already planning on using, but I needed a black and white. So I ordered those colors and also this blue to round out my palette.
Yarn
- Yollo – Baby Paca: The Wandering Flock
- Lemon Drop – Merino HT Fingering: Moon Drake Co.
- Yellow Tulip – Merino HT Fingering: Moon Drake Co.
- Coral – Sock: Hedgehog Fibres
- Neon Pink – Baby Paca: The Wandering Flock
- Wisteria – Sock: Hedgehog Fibres
- Shamrock – Sock: Hedgehog Fibres
- Onyx – Sock: Hedgehog Fibres
- White 5682 – Heritage: Cascade
Knitting Experience
Brioche Cast On
I was familiar with a few different tab cast ons from taking the workshop and having knit some different shawls over the years. I wanted to do a brioche tab cast on, but didn’t remember how to get started and I didn’t want to reference my Brioband Shawl pattern because I was trying to make this my own.
I ended up searching on YouTube and finding Stephen’s video and I knit a variation of this technique with fewer repeats to try and keep it *my* design. I cast on with my US 5 needles on a 50″ cable.
I started knitting the brioche and I made a few increases which I kind of regretted. I remembered the workshop talking about doing increases in the beginning to really open up the shape, but I didn’t really plan it out or think about the visual design.
But I kept going because I was excited to see what direction it would go and even though it was looking a little weird, I was having fun. I didn’t want to get caught up in being so precious or trying to make my shawl ‘perfect’.
Trinity Stitch
When I attempted my first shawl, I really wanted to use the Trinity Stitch. I found this stitch in a stitch dictionary and I really liked how it looked. I made a few swatches and really wanted to incorporate it somewhere. So after my first shawl became a swatch, I decided to use up my scrap yarns and make a Rainbow Trinity Blanket.
With this Trinity Brioche Shawl, I knew I wanted to try and create rainbow stripes in trinity stitch. I love this stitch because it’s fun to knit and I like the cute little bobbles it makes.
I knit a quick swatch to check how many pattern repeats I wanted to do and to test the look of the color transition. It’s a 4-row repeat, but I decided to knit 6 rows of each color. The pattern is basically a 2-row repeat with the second set offset, so it was easy to adapt the pattern to fit my color changes. To help the color transition look smoother, I also knit the first RS row with the new color. I was really happy with these changes and how the colors looked.
During this section, I kept the spine stitches as stockinette to make it easier for me to keep track of what I was doing. But the stockinette spine caused the edge to sort of roll, so I would definitely change that on a future shawl.
Brioche
With this section of brioche, I knew I was due for an increase row. I didn’t really know how to incorporate increases into the trinity stitch, but I also didn’t want to do a stripe of increases before the brioche. So I knit increases into my first brioche repeat and I immediately felt like it was too many.
I tried to calculate and make a plan for my increases, but I wasn’t really thinking it through. I could already tell that my shawl was no longer a semi-circle, but more of a “swoopy” crescent shape. I was ok with that though since I was just having fun and trying things out. I was loving the black and white contrasting with the colorful and I wanted to just keep going.
Seed Stitch
After the brioche, I didn’t really want to do another trinity section. I wanted something fun, but I felt like I was kind of stuck. To keep the color symmetry, I felt I had to do rainbow stripes but I couldn’t find any other stitch patterns that I liked that were similarly dense or textured.
I wanted to have more than just brioche and trinity stitch in this shawl because I love the sampler/eclectic shawl look. But I wasn’t finding anything in my stitch dictionary that I wanted. I felt like the color pattern had already been established and I couldn’t change it now. So after a lot of debate, I decided to go with seed stitch.
Seed stitch is textured and beautiful. It’s a nice break from brioche and the texture makes it easy to hide color transitions. I knit 6 rows in each color and knit garter stitch for the spine.
Brioche
With my next section, I increased again to sort of match the increases in the previous brioche section. I did a lot fewer increases with somewhat of a plan but I still felt like it was too many. Part of the issue is that brioche can look really tight and bunched until it’s blocked. I just wasn’t loving it but it’s hard to visualize the result until it’s stretched and blocked.
At this point, I stopped taking notes about my row counts and stitch counts. I was a little discouraged with the design and thought that I wouldn’t want to recreate it anyway, so might as well just enjoy the knitting without trying to document everything.
Trinity Stitch
With the first trinity stitch section, I placed stitch markers around the pattern and as the edge stitches continued to grow, I would incorporate another p3tog or k/p/k stitch.
With this section, I did that same technique, but with the pattern itself, I adjusted it to start and end with the p3tog + the beginning/end k stitch. So that this way, when I was ready to bring in a new pattern stitch from the edge increases, it was always a k/p/k which made it really easy.
I felt like the more I knit and kept trying new things, the more I learned. Even though I was discouraged from my shaping issues, I was enjoying the process.
Brioche
I didn’t do any increases in this final brioche section mostly because I thought the shape was already super weird. I knit through this section a spent most of the time trying to figure out what kind of border I wanted to do.
Border
I had been looking at a lot of different stitch dictionaries at their “Endings and Edges” patterns, but none of them looked like what I wanted. Ideally, I wanted something like the Fantastitch border, but that one is clearly a super custom special design; not just a stitch pattern in a book.
I finally decided to do a modification on the Maderia Shell edging stitch that I also found in my stitch dictionary. I knit a two-row stripe in the Yollo color to get my stitch count up to a multiple of 18 + 1 as required in the pattern.
The Maderia Shell is a 4-row repeat and I changed row 2 to be a knit row. I thought this section looked really nice, and considered making it a 6-row repeat in each color, but decided against it. I think that it would have looked a little more balanced had I done 6-rows (like I had done with the other rainbow sections).
Striped I-Cord
I wanted to use a striped I-cord, but wasn’t sure how to achieve that effect. I found a video where Stephen does a striped I-cord tutorial on the Bubbles & Brioche shawl, and he references this same technique is also in the Starflake shawl. I’ve knit the starflake twice, but I think I missed the striped I-cord part.
This icord looks really special. I kept my stitches extra loose when switching colors because I was worried about any pulling issues. I think it looks great.
Blocking + Finishing
I could see that the shawl had some shaping issues. It was puckering/not laying flat in certain places and just seemed weird. I didn’t think these issues could really be fixed with blocking, but I wanted “my first shawl” to look its best.
So I soaked my Trinity Brioche shawl in cool water and then aggressively blocked it into the semi-circular shape I wanted it to be. Let me tell you, I was shocked at the difference it made! I knew blocking was magical, but I was pleasantly surprised with the change.
Still clearly, the shaping is weird in the brioche sections. The brioche is more open in some sections than in others and the white CC is less obvious. But overall, I feel like this shawl looks great and I’m really proud of how it turned out!
Overall Thoughts
I love the colors and the contrast in this Trinity Brioche shawl. It was fun experimenting with the trinity stitch and joining colors, swatching, trying things out, and playing with different stitch patterns.
I sort of lost track of shaping while knitting this shawl. When knitting my next shawl design, I would definitely spend a little more time trying to calculate the number of increases I need + play with placement.
In the future, I would not be afraid to just rip back if something starts to look a little weird. I could tell from my first brioche increases that it was looking odd, but I didn’t want to rip back because I was too excited with the colors and the idea, that I just wanted to keep going. I’m glad I didn’t let “perfection” hold me back, but also blocking saved this shawl.
Knitting this shawl was a good learning experience and I can’t wait to experiment more. I definitely recommend the Top-Down Shawl Design Westknits Workshop if you’re interested in making your own shawl designs. The course was really inspirational, but it wasn’t until I actually applied the lessons that I realized the true value. I loved learning the increase/shaping formulas, but the most valuable was seeing Stephen’s thought process as he designs.
He posted this video recently and I loved hearing about how he thinks of projects.
I hoped this knitting experience post was helpful for you. Check out my Ravelry page to see my other projects and what I’m working on next!
