Having been in lockdown for eight months, I thought I would review what I've been weaving during the time of COVID-19. I have a few towels that were woven before March 2020, but most of these were made since then.
All of the towels were woven using 10/2 mercerized cotton in both the warp and weft, sett at 30 epi. Each set of towels were woven as some sort of point twill - most of them were different - on eight shafts. The tie-up for all was a 2-2-1-1-1-1 twill.
I am still using pictures as color inspiration and creating random stripes as the color design. An online random stripe generator is very useful when designing the stripes, although I do tweak the color order and stripe size a bit. I work toward proportion of values across each warp that emphasize the medium value colors and use less of the high intensity and dark value colors.
The latest towels off the loom, I called Lupine towels - inspired by a picture of a mountainscape with flowers.
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| Colors for Lupine towels |
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| Lupine Towels edge |
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| Lupine Towels |
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The Golden Gate towels were inspired by a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge over the Bay.
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| Golden Gate Towel Inspiration and Yarn |
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| Golden Gate Towels |
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| Golden Gate Towels - edge |
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The Beach Towels resulted from work I did to put together a presentation to my local fiber guild. I talked a bit about my process for designing these striped colored towels. To give an illustration, I chose this picture of Honolulu. I liked the colors so much that I wove towels using the color choices.
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| Beach Towel Inspiration and Yarns |
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| Beach Towels |
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| Beach Towels - Edge |
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| Mountain Meadow Color Inspiration and Yarn |
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| Mountain Meadow Towels |
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| Mountain Meadow Towels - Edge |
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I have a few random towels left over from various warps. The Candy Box towel was design with the same striping as the others above. The inspiration was a box rather than a picture. The Turned Taquete was the result of a group study of the weave structure.
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| Candy Box Towel Inspiration |
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| Candy Box Towel |
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| Turned Taquete |
I have always loved natural bleached cotton yarn as a basis for towels. The Russian Cloth Towels are woven on 4-shafts using a fancy 2/2 twill pattern.
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| Russian Cloth |
Although the pandemic has been catastrophic for so many people, it has given me a chance to weave more than usual.
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