The colors I used were blue, gray, red, and turquoise. This was a fun project to weave. I also added a hang tag woven with the same colors.
Collection: MAFA 2021 Towel Exchange
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I used 422 ends including floating selvages. The warp is Chocolate Brown by Spartan Dyers from Cotton Clouds. The weft is turquoise by Maurice Brassard from The Woolery.
My draft is #355 in Strickler’s A Weaver’s Book of Eight-Shaft Patterns. This is a plaited twill pattern.
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The original draft I found on the Schacht website had 414 ends, so I adjusted to 430 ends to meet the necessary width requirement. I also used a simplified threading, a draft of which was supplied to me by Judie Eatough.
I machine washed the towel in cold water and dried in the dryer on high heat to wet set. The towel was then pressed using a cotton and steam setting on my iron.
I used a 12 yard warp of 8/2 ring spun cotton and used Brassard’s 8/2 cotton for weft in the color Vieu Blue.
The towel was machine hemmed.
I love weaving these towels as the pattern is so easy to memorize and you can just weave almost without thought. The easy simplified threading I used makes threading the heddles an easy task.
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Note that the heddle count is significantly greater for harnesses 2 and 3 and minimal for harnesses 1 and 4.
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I was introduced to this pattern, “Checked Houndstooth,” in a Scandinavian Towel class taught by Melissa Weaver Dunning. This traditional design can be found in Simple Weaves by Birgitta Bengtsson Bjork & Tina Ingell, p. 92.
Warp is wound 36 Periwinkle, 4 Marine, 4 White, 4 M, 4W, 4M, 4W, 4M, 4W, 4M—a total of 72 ends in one repeat, ending with 36 Periwinkle to balance. Add an extra 4 threads for EACH selvage, doubling the first and last four threads. Weft color order is the same.
Materials used were 8/2 Brassard Cottolins in Periwinkle, Marine, and Blanchi (White).
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I made 6 towels on this warp. For all the towels except this one, I used 8/2 cotton. On this towel, I used a thicker cotton (Conshohocken ‘Softball’ cotton, color 088 – cherry). It made the whole towel very fluffy and I loved it.
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I just started weaving in August 2020. My fiber friends, who are also weavers, encouraged me to join Jane Stafford’s Online Guild. I fell in love with Jane’s boucle towel kits and bought two for the colors. However, I wanted to try something I had not seen, towels woven with 8/4 cotton as warp, with the goal being a thick absorbent towel with texture. For added texture, the warp in the center was created by alternating 8/4 cotton warp with a matching boucle yarn. I wanted to see if there would be much difference between the combo 8/4 cotton + cotton boucle versus 8/4 cotton alone.
The towel weft was woven with boucle alone, alternating colors and weaving inches to follow Fibonacci sequences (1, 2 ,3, 5, 8, 5, 3, 2, 1). Color progression: aqua, orange, light green, fuchsia, and purple. I wanted the colors to play together in the towel to create visual interest. While I was very reluctant to weave with purple boucle as part of my design, I found this color series one of my favorites. Interestingly, after finishing, there did not seem to be a great textural difference between the areas woven with the 8/4 cotton + boucle combo or in the 8/4 cotton warp alone.
The hems were woven with 16/2 cotton and hand stitched. I hope you will enjoy this towel as much as I enjoyed weaving it!
Warp: 12epi 8/4 carpet warp, 266 warp ends total.
Sley: 20 ends peacock, 6 black, 45 jade, 6 black, 56 each peacock and peacock boucle, 6 black, 45 jade, 6 black, 20 peacock
Weft: cotton boucle in aqua, orange, light green, fuchsia, and purple
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I varied Jane’s original design, but started with her ideas. My fiber is actually cotton boucle and cottolin.
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This is a draft that blends overshot and huck with plainweave in between. It was very hard to beat the overshot to square, so I ended up using sewing thread for tabby.
418 ends; 2.5 yards long. 8-shaft loom, 21″ weaving width; 10 dent reed.
The towel was washed in warm water and dried. Pressed hard to set the pattern. The hem is handsewn.
Warp is a mix of 8/2 natural Bockens cotton and 8/2 Bockens Nialin (2003 gray).
Weft is 8/2 black cottolin.
The overshot border is 5/2 Valley Yarns perle cotton for the pattern (8990 black). The tabby is black linen sewing thread.
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I used the napkin patterns in the Handwoven article and adapted them. I used the treadling for towel 1.
I began and ended the towel with 1 ½ inches of 10/2 weft to make the hems a little less chunky.
20″ in reed; 30″ long. Warp ends: 488 + selvages.