Philadelphia Guild of Handweavers

MAFA2025-3952

I was intrigued by this pattern and I call it “Bubbles”. It doesn’t look like the pattern pictured in the magazine – probably because I chose to use a ground weft in between each pattern weft. Using a variegated royal blue, gold and aqua for the ground created an interesting pattern.
The size was 19″ in the reed and 28″ woven was the length on the loom; but after wet finishing, its size is 15 1/2″ X 23 1/2″.
Total number of ends was 457.
I used white sewing machine thread for the hem (turned under 1 1/2″ on each end and machine stitched it in place.)
I think it makes for an absorbent towel.

MAFA2025-3917

Needed floating selvedges; also, replaced the cotton floating selvedges with a 2/20 brown rayon as the cotton kept breaking.

Because the silk tussah is a boucle and is “sticky”, don’t use it for warp again. And the silk is a Giovanna Imperial yarn, which is no longer available – it was a happy accident to find the multicolored, bumpy polyester (from Made in America) was such a good substitute in the weft (the warp has the majority of the silk in it).

Used 3 ends / dent in a 10 dent / inch reed which is 10″ wide in the reed. I found the draft in Handwoven; but, changed the fibers used, order of color, sett, treadling, etc.; the only thing original is the satin draft.

Had some major issues with the shed as the shafts were misbehaving (some were rising when they weren’t needed); almost cut it off and threw it in the trash. But, my hubby/loom engineer helped a great deal and we got the correct shafts to raise or lower when required. This was woven on a 2002 24 shaft AVL Production Dobby Loom with a Compu-Dobby III – old but a workhorse. I use an old laptop – not attached to the internet to drive my loom; so I can’t download a wif file from it.

Inspiration was the fact that I have some left over 20/2 cotton (in white and taupe) from a previous project and thought the silk boucle was perfect match; and wanted to try a satin draft. Plus, my daughter found the draft and suggested that she would like a table runner; and, I am trying to use finer yarns in my weaving.

MAFA2025-3874

This reversible rug was designed as a three-end tied unit weave and woven using shaft-switching. The selvedges were card-woven. The gold color was hand-dyed.

MAFA2023-043

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 and white to maximize the contrast of the yarns.

This design was created for my submission to the Woolery 2023 Weave-Off. My warp was long enough for me to make several towels and I’m happy to share one of them as part of the towel exchange.

The trickiest part of this project was that some of warp threads wanted to cross. This resulted in 2 white threads or 2 blue threads being next to each other at a few places in the warp. It wasn’t particularly noticeable in the waves but it was quite obvious in the weft picks that became the hem. It’s not clear if this was a tension issue or if the sett could have been decreased. Getting them to uncross when weaving the hem picks is possible but tedious.

In the attached WIF and reading from right to left, the first 88 warp threads are the pattern and can be repeated. For the finished towel, I repeated this 5 times and then transitioned back to the hem portion.

MAFA2021-053

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 4, Grey 24, Cannell 48, White 40, Sage 56, Grey 64, then reverse for mirror image). Total ends: 480; width in loom: 20″.

On this warp I wove 4 towels, and all have different treadling and design, although the same weft colors were used for all four. Hems are hand stitched.

MAFA2021-047

This towel was woven on a long warp of 496 threads in a 2 block design. Each block uses 8 shafts in a straight threading. I used several tie-ups to vary the look of each towel, and even included a tabby with one or two of them in the treadling.

I love towels with hanging loops, so I wove a narrow band on an inkle loom to sew into the hem. The threads on this are 10/2 cotton, with 8/2 color accents matching some of the weft colors.

MAFA2019-034

I simply played with random striping in both the warp and weft. While the pattern is technically from Gist Yarn, the point draft is from page 71 of Ann Dixon’s Handweaver’s Pattern Directory.

MAFA2019-003

Pattern was a plain weave towel with pick up stick details. I used organic colorgrown cotton. Light green/dark green. The colors will show the more it is washed and used.

MAFA2019-004

Woven on rigid heddle loom, with pickup stick used as third shaft. I was exploring textures available on a rigid heddle loom and tried to develop a threading and treading to get a Bumberet texture. This turned out to be almost impossible because Bumberet depends on sequences of 3s. Only some of the color stripes show the typical Bumberet design. However, I’m pleased with the texture which will be absorbent.

MAFA2019-019

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.