One Color Challenge Tackled

When I started my "Calendar Towel" Challenge, I knew there would be a couple of pictures in the set that would be difficult to translate to pleasing towel color combinations.  The August picture was pure Halloween - all orange and black.  I really wasn't interested in weaving Halloween towels.  So I spent time looking at the picture and found a few more colors that would tone down and or complement the bold, obvious ones.  I found purple in the clouds and some yellow and gold in the sunset.

By not using colors as the appear proportionately in the picture, I found that the resulting warp was something I liked.  When it came to picking weft colors, I knew the purple would tone down the bold colors slightly and complement the oranges.  I wanted to use both the yellow and gold colors from the warp colors as well for weft.  For the last weft colors, I chose a red that was slightly on the blue side.  These turned out to be the ones I like the best.

 

 

 

The warp was threaded to an 8-point twill.  The yarn is 10/2 perle cotton sett at 24 epi in a 12 dent reed.  The different treadlings for the towels were - straight so that little carats were produced; regular 8-point tromp as writ and irregular point lengths in a somewhat random fashion.  The treadles were tied up to a 2-2-1-1-1 treadling.

 

 

I found that the black yarn I used for a few places on the warp was very weak.  I had several threads break as I was lashing on. This was not a very encouraging way to start the project.  I also had one thread that kept breaking even when I entirely changed the piece of yarn in that particular heddle.  I know that black yarn can be less robust than other, but this was ridiculous...

 

 

In spite of my fears for this color combination, I am happy with the results.  I only put on enough warp for six towel so I wish I had planned to do more.  Although the trouble with the black yarn was enough for me to be happy that there were only six.

 

Purple weft

Yellow (left) Gold (right)

Red weft