Forget the Samples - Let's Make Something

OK, for those of you who know me, you know I am terrible when it comes to sampling. (Well, also record keeping and a number of other things, but that's beside the point.) I decided to try to just weave off some towels with the 16-shaft point warp. This is the Alderman design using 10/2 unmercerized cotton in dark green.



I am not a big fan of green, but I think I got this as part of a "surprise" batch of yarn somewhere along the line. I really prefer to use unmercerized yarn for towels, although there is still a great debate around which is better - unmercerized or mercerized. The jury is still out.

Here is the detail. As you can see, thanks to Beryl, I've fixed the treadling errors. I love the computer control! It really make it very easy to make adjustment or fixes. I am glad I had some experience in Midland with a manual dobby, but this is much better.

Weaving towels was great for a snowy Sunday.

16-Shaft Point Designs

I have continued to work on the 16-shaft point twill samples I started a few months ago. Here is a picture of the entire piece.

This was done with 10/2 unmercerized cotton - white in the warp and dark green, yellow and kelly green in the weft. The yellow and kelly green are mercerized. The latter I don't know why I have so much and am trying to get rid of. Yeah!

The first design is a star/flower like pattern that was used as an exercise in JoAnn's Diaper class. It is pretty and I love the detail I can get with the extra shafts.

These samples are unwashed.

Even with this not so great picture, you can see the detail.
I think when washed it will lose the vertical line-spaces.

The second design is from Sharon Alderman's book

Mastering Weave Structures, page 54

This picture shows the original design at the bottom and a variation I created by playing around with the tie-up.

The variations are not nearly as interesting or crisp but I wanted to have something that had shorter floats. With the sett (24 epi)

and the yarn, the floats on the original aren't too long.

I like the original design better.

Here is the detail of the original design - with two treadling errors. {Thanks Beryl for noticing these!}

It's not quite square, but maybe with washing it will look ok. The diamonds with the longer warp floats look squarer than the other diamonds do.

The last set of samples are a design from Kathryn Wertenberger's

book, 8, 12...20 An Introduction to Multishaft Weaving, pg 65.

The yellow is the original design and the green a variation.

This is a really nice design - the picture doesn't do it justice.

I've started working on Bonnie Inouye's book, Exploring Multishaft Design, so I am hoping to have a lot more unique designs in the

future. Also there are napkins for an exchange with the Weaving Discussion Group and I need to finish off the 8 yards of warp on the AVL. So much more weaving ahead.