American Elm is a big, bold rectangular lace shawl featuring alternating stripes in a leaf lace pattern and wavy ends in contrasting yarn, with optional beads. Worked in red, white, and blue, it’s a knitted salute to the US flag. Worked in rainbow pride or other meaningful colors, it says that America is a big, beautiful, diverse place and Americans come in all flavors, so to speak.

The leaf lace stripes are modules that are joined as you go, so only one color is used at a time and there’s no sewing. Each module begins with a provisional cast-on (PCO) and ends with stitches being transferred to waste yarn. After making the center stripe, the rest of the stripes are joined to the edge of a previous stripe while being knitted. After all the stripes are finished, the PCO and stitches from waste yarn are picked up and the wavy ends are worked across all the stripes together. The graphic shows the order of working the sections. Increases and decreases are performed on right-side rows and beads are added on wrong-side rows.

There are a few challenging places: when leaf lace modules are first joined you have to pay attention to ensure that the joining is correct, and when picking up stitches for the wavy ends you have to check the stitch counts in each section and adjust in a few places. After sections are established, however, the knitting becomes pretty straightforward.

Charts and written instructions are provided for all sections of the shawl. Two versions of the pattern are provided: the full pattern and a short version. The short version is for people who prefer to print their patterns without using a lot of toner and paper, but most of the background information and technical details have been removed. The full pattern has lots of helpful photos and information, so even if you plan to print your pattern it’s a good idea to look at the full version on your computer just so you have all of the information before you begin. Both versions include a checklist for keeping track of where you are in the pattern.

The example shawl is pretty big: 180 x 55 cm / 71” x 22” after blocking. If you want to change the length, you can easily work more or less repeats of leaf lace. If you want to change the width, you can work more or less stripes but you will have to change the wavy ends. This is more involved but supplementary charts and written instructions are included for you to adjust the wavy ends to suit your project.

Yarn and beads needed:

The pattern was developed using lace-weight yarn on 3.5 mm / US size 4 needles. For my shawl (5 stripes, 22 leaf lace repeats), I used 278 grams of Colrain Lace in total, which is about 1572 meters or 1719 yards. By module:

3 red stripes used 672 meters = 735 yards
2 white stripes used 472 meters = 517 yards
2 blue wavy ends used 424 meters = 464 yards

My wonderful test knitter, sabrinadlg, used a cobweb weight yarn held double throughout, and used about the same total grams of yarn on 3.5 mm needles. Her final size after blocking was 213 cm x 76 cm / 84” x 30”. She reports that two strands of cobweb yarn held together work well for this pattern.

Beads are optional but really make the design pop, especially the “stars” in the wavy ends. The patterns uses a total of 2140 size 6/0 beads. By color:

924 red beads for 3 red stripes
616 clear beads for 2 white stripes
600 white beads for 2 wavy ends

Other materials needed:

Waste yarn and sewing thread for the provisional CO method described in the pattern – a few meters / yards.

Knitting needles in a size that works for your yarn, plus a thinner needle for picking up stitches from the PCO

Crochet hook for PCO, in a size that works with your waste yarn

Removable stitch markers – highly recommended

One or two spools of sewing thread in contrasting colors for lifelines – highly recommended

Small crochet hook or other tool for placing beads, if used

Scissors

Tapestry needle for weaving in yarn ends

Techniques and stitches used:

Note: tutorials can be found online for any techniques not explained in the pattern

Provisional cast-on – my preferred method is fully described in the pattern but you can use your own favorite method if you like

Double-Chain bind-off (also known as Chinese Waitress bind-off)

Knit

Purl

K2tog

K3tog

ssk

sssk

s2tog-k1-p2sso (also known as a centered double decrease)

YO

M1R

M1L

Loop – pull a loop of yarn through a YO on an adjacent module (fully described in text)

Bead – place a bead on a stitch then purl it

Acknowledgement:

Last but not least, I’d like to give credit to the lovely, wonderful test knitter who helped bring this pattern to Ravelry: sabrinadlg Thank you very much!