This twill is threaded and treadled based on draft on Heinrich Woolhever’s 1821 Pattern Books Draft. It represents further use of a pattern I chose to explore for the Early Weaving Books and Manuscripts Group of Complex Weavers. The cheerful stripes are my addition.
Collection: MAFA 2019 Towel Exchange
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Page 31 of the BGH book shows a skeleton drawdown of Wishing Well for a bookmark that is significantly different from the Wishing Well draft on page 97 (the book suggests it may be due to a treadling variation). Using the skeleton drawdown, I determined the threading/treadling that would provide this effect.
The threading was not drafted as overshot, preferring instead to have groups of 2 or 3 consecutive ends threaded on the same shaft for textural interest. The majority of the towel is woven as plain weave, with one or more bands of the pattern woven as for overshot (pattern picks alternate with plain weave picks). The threading had 431 threads, plus 2 for the floating selveges.
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A 4-shaft point twill sounds boring but when you add warp stripes of tan, red, green and bright yellow separated by white stripes edged by a single navy thread there is hope. Add an interesting tie-up and treadling to create an interesting texture you have a towel of beauty. Towels like this make dish drying something you look forward to doing.
I have arranged the treadling on 6 treadles for ease. Only 4 treadles are necessary.
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Tip: Use a temple.
Note that the draft shows only four stripes of the 16 I used in the towel. I basically flopped the draft several times. This resulted in two wide green stripes on the sides and one wide purple stripe in the center. Stripe order is: blue-violet, blue, blue-green, green; G, BG, B, BV; BV, B, BG, G; G, BG, B, V.
This was created in response to Jockey Hollow Weaver’s swatch exchange. We played “Weavers Poker, ” in which each participant was dealt five cards for Weave Structure; Color; Color Relationship; Fiber; and Other, and was challenged to create swatches showing at least 4 of 5. My hand was: monk’s belt; orange; analogous, chenille, and iridescence. My swatches had orange weft, with the monk’s belt pattern in light-orange chenille. For my towels, however, I’m using fuchsia 10/2 for the weft. (It’s still iridescent.)
The draft shows three possibilities for the monk’s belt accent; only the first is used in the towels. These monk’s belt patterns are from Dixon (2007), _The Handweaver’s Pattern Dictionary_, p. 101. Draft shows tabby; in monk’s belt, tabby A and B alternate between the pattern picks.
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I recorded this draft in iWeaveIt quite a while ago as Simplified Damask from Marguerite Davison’s Handweavers Pattern Book. However, this is not that draft so I now have no idea where the pattern came from.
I repeated the pattern 8 times and added 28 ends at the left-hand side and 12 ends on the right-hand side to balance out the pattern.
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I am a beginner weaver and this is my first project. The cotton thread I used tangled easily and I struggled with setting the warp. And then making sure it was not twisted or mis-threaded. There are a few (many) mistakes.