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 with this warm and rustic interpretation of the colors. Warp is 402 ends including fs with natural, dark brown and gold elements. Weft for the piece is a warm yellow-gold and a lighter, whiskey colored brown. Hems are 20/2 cotton in rust, and are machine hemmed. I used all 8 shafts, threaded straight draw because I wasn’t sure what treadling I would use, but for this one, I just used a 2/2 twill to let the plaid take center stage.
Purpose: Towels
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Our weaving study group had a challenge to design and weave something using a given simple profile draft.
I decided to give myself a further challenge by using a weave structure that I had not or had rarely used, and chose turned taqueté.
I used three colours in the warp – white/blue for one block and green/white for the other. I wove three tea towels each using one of the three colours for the weft and chose the one with white weft for this exchange.
The towels seem a little soft to me. So, if I were to weave these again, I might try using a sett of 22 epi and 22 ppi.
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This was the first project I wove on my first loom, an older 12-shaft Macomber that took me over 9 months to refurbish. The towels turned out better than I had hoped, so of course I put them away “for posterity”. I couldn’t bear to let my husband misuse / stain them! Now, many weaving successes and failures later, I realize how silly that was, so I’m giving them away.
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This is actually a variation of the above draft. I was inspired by similar variation I’d seen in a Facebook weaving group. I loved the way she had highlighted one repeat of the design instead of repeating it across the whole towel – she had also turned the whole thing however since this was my first step away from using a warp “recipe” I decided not to attempt that. The designing experience was… humbling. I learned a lot of what not to do – but luckily I got there in the end and I’m really pleased with the finished product.
The finished towels were machine washed in warm water and dried on high heat. Then pressed and hems hand sewn.
The attached draft only accounts for the center. Repeat the first 15 ends as needed to center the threading in your warp.
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On the .wif, the first 14 thread is one edge of the towel and the other edge is the last 32 threads. Repeat the 40 threads in the middle as often as needed for the towel you are weaving. I overestimated the shrinkage of my weaving, so this is a big towel.
Warping this towel was a lot of work because of all the thread changes. I like what I got, but I am not sure I would do it again. I create a three page spreadsheet to make sure that I got all the threads in the right order while warping and then used those sheets for my threading also.
I like the towels I made, but not sure if I would do this again. I did accomplish one of my goals which was to use up some of my stash. I have a lot more of the yarns I used in the weft.
MAFA2023-008
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 taking off the loom, I serged the ends of each towel, folded the hem, and used the ‘stitch in the ditch’ technique with a straight stitch.
Very enjoyable to weave!