Join me as I block the Fingering Weight Whisper Lace Scarf.

I don’t have a dedicated place to block things. So they get laid out on my blocking mats on the floor in my living room or on my bed so I can close the door and keep the cat off them.

Blocking all starts with a soak. I use a sweater-size bin for small projects, cool water, and about a capful of Eucalan. I let the item soak for about 20 minutes. I squeeze out as much water as possible before rolling it in a towel to get out more. Read my Basic Wet Blocking post here.

Some projects can be blocked by simply soaking the accessory and laying it flat to dry. However, I decided this project wanted more aggressive blocking to show off the stitch pattern. So I’m using blocking wires and T-pins.

I’m disappointed I forgot to take a picture before soaking the scarf because I wanted to show the difference blocking makes. The scarf was about 6 inches wide by 57 inches long before blocking.

You can see quite a bit of difference here before I start threading the wires along the edge of the scarf.

I threaded the blocking wires up the sides of the scarf, being careful to get under a section of stitches. I needed three wires on each side to cover the length of the scarf. I blocked the scarf out to 8 inches wide and 75 inches long.

The wires overlap along the sides of the scarf. The T-pins are placed inside the wires to spread the scarf width-wise and used in the picot shell edging.

After removing the wires and T-pins, the scarf measurements relaxed approximately 7 inches wide by 72 inches long. That is a dramatic size change! Because the pre-blocked dimension was 6 inches wide by 57 inches long. In length, it grew by about 25%.

Because I forgot to take a before-soaking photo, please check out the difference between the blocked scarf on the left and the unblocked scarf I’m working on on the right. After blocking the scarf, the holes transform and look like circles. I love the negative space!

The Whisper Lace Scarf was one of the very first designs I self-published. The original design only used lace-weight yarn. The new and improved pattern will include lace-weight and fingering-weight yarn directions.

Let me know if you have any questions in the comments!