February Towels

Now that the holidays are over and my 24 +/- samples are finished, I can get back to the loom and perhaps finished the 12 sets of towels from the Calendar project.  I decided to work on the February picture.  After considering the colors I chose originally, I changed a few. 

 The original set of colors is on the left.  I changed the blue to a lighter shade and got rid of the pink and added a very light blue.  The orangey color was swapped for a bright gold. 

The old combination might have worked but these do look good together.




                                           The warp before any weaving has been done.

The yarn is 10/2 perle cotton sett at 24 epi and woven around 24 ppi.  These towels are threaded to a regular 8-shaft point and woven with a 1-1-1-1-2-2 twill pattern. 

Here is the first towel woven - with rust weft. 









Here is the towel using the silver from the warp.

24 Plus or Minus Samples

It is time again for me to rush to finish the samples for the Complex Weavers Study Group: 24 +/- . For some reason, I always leave this to the last minute.

While browsing through a magazine, my eye was caught by a Coldwater Creek ad.   The featured sweater had bold diamond shapes in light yarn on a dark background.  The hem and cuffs were the reverse – dark diamonds on a light background.  I decided to try to see if I could duplicate it. 

 

Because of the scale, my diamonds are smaller than the sweater diamonds.  I also wasn’t able to figure out how to recreate the smaller diamonds positioned between the diamonds on every other row.  But I was pretty pleased to figure out how to make the little carat and the “flower-like” shapes.

 

To achieve this design, I started with a 24 shaft point twill.  I used the tie-up box to introduce the design features.  I decided to alternate sections of light and warp so that I could see the effect of light on dark and dark on light, as was used in the sweater.  As a bonus, the light on light and dark on dark motifs are also present.

 

 I'm still not great at threading the 24-shaft loom - maybe my arms are too short or I can't see the light heddles on the light floor.  Anyway, I had several threads that were in the wrong heddles or heddles that were empty.  It took me two fixes to get it correct.

 

Here's the fabric on the loom.  This picture makes it look fantastic.  The beat isn't as even as this makes it appear.

Detailed look

The final piece.  I put on about 3 yards and wove 2 1/4 yards.  There was plenty to create the 24 samples I needed for the exchange.  It would be interesting to do this again in lower contrast colors and not alternate the dark and light sections.

Overall, I was pleased with the results. Because of the pattern, there were sections that beat in more densely than the rest.  It isn't exactly the same as the sweater pattern, but it was a fun exercise.