This was my first ever kitchen towel project! It also was my first shaddow weave! My inspiration was thinking about an American flag and how the stripes would undulate if the wind were blowing. I chose to shadow weave in blue and white vs red...
452 ends I put on a long warp and regretted it later; with the color changes it was slow weaving. I was unable to find an attractive way to carry the colors along a selvage. I liked the use of two shafts to create a...
Wind on 500 ends: 496 for the threading and 2 doubled floating selvedges (which I like for strength in a workhorse handwoven) Be sure to keep a record of your color order for symmetry. I found it best to create threading blocks divisible by 4...
Each warp stripe is 6 ends wide, alternating black and white except between wider sections where I doubled the black stripe. Weft stripes can repeat as much as you like. This pattern was inspired by my recent trip to New Zealand and the preponderance of...
The warp was 359 ends.The hem is hand sewn with a polyester sewing thread....
This was from a warp that I put on to make thank you towels for my neighbor. She picked colors outside of my comfort zone, so my brief was to make towels that I liked out of colors that weren’t my favorite. I was pleased...
This pattern is based on a draft that Robyn Spady sent me for my participation in her MAFA 2023 class ‘Pictures, Piles, Potpourri, and Perplexing Curiosities.’ She titled the structure “Better Than Basket Weave Basket Weave.” I used two threads for each floating selvage. After...
410 warp ends total. 408 for pattern, plus one extra at each selvedge. Draft adapted for cotton instead of linen/cotolin. Woven using picks of sewing thread at each end to create fold lines for the hem. Sewing thread was removed prior to turning and sewing...
455 ends – 1 end 6/2 and 2 ends 20/2 per dent in 8 dent reed. Warp: white thick, white thin Weft: blue thick, white thin Used Bluegrass Mills 6/2 cotton from Woolery for thick warp and weft and UKI 20/2 for thin warp and...
I used Parson’s crepe threading, treadling and tie-up as referenced above, but added a band of my own design to one side of the towel....
I made a few small changes to the draft (especially the tie-up, so I could walk the treadling) but none of my changes alter the result in any significant way and credit for this design belongs fully with Ms. Hall. This towel used 368 ends...
The hand-painted stripes were dyed using Procion MX Fiber Reactive dyes. I used a different color weft for each towel....
Linen warp bobbins had to be very wet to prevent loops in the selvedge. Tension was a problem throughout and I helped that by spraying the threads. The yarn seems too coarse to make a really nice towel....
The section on the draft that is labeled to be omitted was included only to illustrate that I used a variety of colors for the last 8 threads of each 40-thread unit. I used unmercerized cotton for both warp and weft....
I started out with Strickler #246, and as I was working with two different shades of red in the weft, I realized how much it reminded me of watermelon. I decided to add some lines in shades of green to represent the rind, along with...
I use my towel projects as experiments. The draft does not show threads per color stripe, and the final threading was not exactly what my original plan called for. For these towels, the threading (right to left) was: Grey 20, White 4, Grey 12, White...
Warp Width: 19.5″ Sett: 24 Reed: 12 Sley: double # Ends: 470 Warp Yarn: unmercerized cotton Count: 8/2 Color: 6 colors Weft Yarn: unmercerized cotton Count: 8/2 Color: 6 colors, same as warp. Used one color for each of the 6 towels. Finished dimensions: 16.5...
I was inspired by “Twill Illusions with Two and Four Blocks” by Freya van Holst Pellekaan, p. 96 in Best of Weaver’s: Twill Thrills (2004). Basic threading, tie-up, and treadling for 5-end satin blocks is in Handweaving.net #74464. Warp color progression, right-to-left: 514 ends plus...
I selected this pattern because I liked the geometry. I learned more about block patterns and how they are constructed. Strickler’s book notes that this draft, woven by Barbara McClanathan, is a 2 block twill adapted from Väv Magazinet, 1984, Nr.4, pages 20-21. Here are...
A temple is most useful to prevent draw-in. You can make a coordinated set of towels on the same warp, having fun varying weft colors and block sizes. 480 ends Sett 2 per dent in a 12-dent reed Wet finished Hemmed, hand-stitched Love this cottolin!...
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,...
Changing the blocks in the tie-up and treadling can produce a variety of designs in the cloth while weaving on one warp. Towel designs are a good way to play with blocks in the tie up and treadling. I wove four different towels by changing...
Warp (10/2 organic cotton) was 513 ends including floating selvages. Used #3 treadling. A rolled hem was machine stitched....
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....
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....
Twill blocks in 4 warp colors (red, black, grey, white) with block changes not coinciding with color changes. Blocks were woven as 3/1 and 1/3 twill rotating the same four colors as the warp. Color changes were made every 16 picks, alternating which side the...
This was fun and fast to weave. 24 epi 24 ppi 576 ends and 2 floating selvages I simplified the treadling for a less busy effect. Before finishing: 26″ long x 22″ wide After finishing: 22″ long x 20.5″ wide Shrinkage: 22% Machine wash cool,...
I wanted to weave a linen towel but with this design the linen weft didn’t work well, so I changed to cotton and was well pleased. This can be woven on a 4 shaft loom also—Davison has many patterns....
The treadling was adjusted to allow squared blocks, with 8/2 Brassard cotton used for warp and weft. After being washed, the texture is nubby and more pronounced. The weaving width in the reed was 20.75″. I like the look and enjoy the process of hemming...
It’s been several years since I wove this towel and I have no memory of where it came from. I think it came from a breast cancer awareness publication....
Name draft created in Fiberworks. Name for threading is: PatCapogrossi. 487 ends. 2 inches of plain weave at each end. Machine washed and dried. Yarns are Lunatic Fringe perle cotton....
This towel represents the many towels I have woven on the straight 8-shaft twill threading using many tie-up and treadling variations in preparation for the MAFA class I am teaching. The threading offers so many options for weaving with the 8 shafts or 4 shafts...
I like weaving turned twills and find that towels woven with the design have a nice texture as well as visual pattern. I had a partial cone of variegated 8/2 cotton that would not be enough for a full towel, so I started placing stripes...
According to the monograph, shadow weave is basically a balanced weave but the patterns are derived from twill. The warp arrangement and weft picks alternate light and dark and the greater contrast, the greater visual impact....
Using the idea that if six colors is good, 60 would be better, I chose yarns from the blues and greens in my 10/2 stash, included cotton I had hand dyed, and wound various stripes onto the warping board, trying to balance colors and vary...
I saw this color palette on Pinterest and chose 4 different colors for the warp. (WEBS: Black Forest, Burnt Sienna, Tobacco and Eggplant.) The width of the stripes and colors can be adjusted to whatever you should desire. Each color stripe was 34 end wide...
The color sequence (Chasing Rainbows) comes from The Weaver’s Weevil by Rebecca Fox and the warp yarn is 10/2 mercerized cotton from Lunatic Fringe (color spectrum). I used black for the weft and threaded on a straight draw....
I was looking for some ideas to help me mix colors and found this draft in a Weavers Magazine. I ended up making 4 towels and used the various suggested treadling options to create alternate patterns and a sampler towel for future reference. Weaving this...
I did not put the different colors of the used threads, it’s up to you to use any color....
I used what color yarns I had on hand, the numbers on the warp order were for my purpose to keep track of my color selection that I wound on card while winding my warp....
The warp alternates 2 threading blocks with 3 thread colors. This is a two shuttle weave and each block of the 2-block treadling uses two colors in the weft, and the color combination changes with each block change. All 3 of the warp colors are...
I used Mastering Weave Structures by Sharon Alderman, which is a great book to brush up on your structures…. Had fun weaving it....
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...
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....
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...
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...
Picked 3 pairs of coordinating colors and used twice in warp by reversing color order within each pair of blocks. Wove off by rotating through all 6 colors of warp and also varying sizes of blocks to make each towel in the warp unique....
Detailed instructions for doing the mock damask are in the 1994 May/June Handwoven magazine. Take your time on pick-up work. Wrong threads can occasionally get caught resulting in very long floats and it’s difficult un-weaving pick-up work . The instruction don’t indicate it but you...
