Paisley Long Shawls

You know I Love paisley.

Elizabeth Aldridge is now offering Paisley long shawls, also known as scarf shawls. These lovely shawls are a silk and wool blend, 28″ wide and 70″ long. She has a variety to select from on her website. Just look under “Sundries”. I’m rather fond of the deep red one.

There are a couple ways you can take these shawls to make them bigger and more square.
One way is to take two shawls; trim off the border along one long side of each. Seam them together along the sides where the border was removed. This would give you a shawl roughly 70″ by 50″. You could do this with a third shawl adding it to the center. This could give roughly 70″x70″.
Another option is to take the borders off of these shawls and add them to a center square. You would need 2 shawls to go around a square wool shawl. (2 shawls = 4 borders.) You can attach the borders on all one side or on alternate corners for a turn-over shawl. (When it is folded, you will see both borders.

Adding ‘paisley’ borders to wool or cashmire centers was common in the mid-century. This happened in one of two ways. The borders were woven seperately. They could be sewn on the centers by a group of women then sold commercially or the borders could be sold/bought and sewn on at home.

Here is a great illustration of long shawls during the Regency era.

Here is a beautiful blue long shawl

For those thinking of piecing two or three of these shawls into a larger shawl, here is a 20s/30s shawl with the border added to the center.

This is a must-see 1815 English shawl in a brillian blue with floral motif