Recipe for a Crescent Shawl + Piece Dyeing: It's Never Over

Looking for a great way to use up oddball skeins of yarn? Part pattern and part creative recipe, Martha Owen‘s Crescent Shawl invites knitters to experiment while creating a beautifully shaped, wearable wrap. With simple techniques and adaptable construction, it‘s a design you'll want to knit—and reinvent—again and again.

After Martha knitted her shawl using leftover odd bits of her handspun yarn, she decided to experiment by piece-dyeing it in madder and lichen. As Martha explains, “Piece dyeing is a way to refresh a garment, unify a textile created with many odd bits of yarn, or alter a palette of many shades in a previous over-dye experiment. It is also a way to recover from an ‘oops!’ color combination.”

Read about Martha's color-test samples using walnut, weld and marigolds, madder, and lichen on one long swatch, allowing her to see the how the same textile looked using different natural-dye methods. What follows is Martha's final shawl, which, after dyeing in madder and lichen, resulted in a beautifully cohesive rust-colored garment.

About: Martha Owen is a resident artist in spinning, knitting, feltmaking, dyeing, and surface design at the John C. Campbell Folk School (folkschool.org) in Brasstown, North Carolina. Her adventure in spinning and natural dyeing began at this very school in 1978. Since 1980, her extended family has included sheep, Angora rabbits, Great Pyrenees, and border collies. Also a banjo player and known to tell a story or two, Martha’s interests in sheep, wool, music, and dance have carried her literally and joyfully around the world. Her children say she is a wool nerd, but her sheep say she is outstanding in her field! Find her on social media @marthaowenwoolens.

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