20211 has been another year of spending time at the loom. I've been doing some different things with the towels I've woven as well as visiting tried and true approaches. I was motivated more by weaving challenges and classes this year.
A lot of people have been weaving Susan Poague's Turned Taquete' circles. I finally succumbed to this structure, which can be a lot of fun, because of a group challenge to weave something using the 2021 Pantone Colors of the Year. This design was adapted from her article in Handwoven Magazine, May/June 2019, pg 46. It was woven on 8 shafts with 10/2 cotton for the warp and weft.
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| Turned Taquete' Drawdown |
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| Turned Taquete' Towel |
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Another challenge this group suggested was to weave something in linen. When I think about linen, I normally think about towels. I also think about lace structures. These were woven using 16/2 linen for both warp and weft for all but one of the towels. For the first one, I decided to use 10/2 cotton just to make sure things were working well.
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| Linen Towels |
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| Linen Towels Drawdown |
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Another group I belong to decided to use US National Park posters as color inspiration for woven pieces. I picked the US Virgin Islands as my inspiration. These towels were woven with 10/2 cotton for the warp and weft in six different colors. The structure is a fancy point twill, treadled in a couple different ways, for each towel.
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| US Virgin Islands Poster |
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| Virgin Islands Towels |
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| Virgin Islands Towels Drawdown |
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I next took a break from challenges and did a bit of free-hand colors. I have most of my 10/2 cotton yarns sitting on top of a bureau and while I was weaving over the course of a week or so, was looking at one corner of the colors. They were all kind of neon and pastel. The colors reminded me of the textiles from the 60's. So I used those colors for the next group of towels. The towels were threaded to an extended point twill and woven with various treadlings on 8 shafts using 10/2 cotton.
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| 60's Towels Colors |
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| 60's Towels |
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| 60 Towels Drawdown |
Recently, I became interested in a weave-along with Tien Chiu and Michele Belson dealing with gradient colors in weaving. The weave-along was intended for napkins, but I couldn't resist weaving towels instead. These had a red and yellow 10/2 cotton warp in a series of curved gradients. I used a number of different colored 10/2 cotton for weft, including yellow, very light pink, magenta and fuchsia. The structure is straight twill on 8 shafts woven with a 2-2-1-1-1-1 tie-up.
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| Gradient Towels |
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| Gradient Towels Drawdown |
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A couple of towels from the "vault".
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| Lupine Towel |
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| Russian Cloth Towel |
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I have found over the years that there was warp left over from a towel run - not enough for a towel but too much to just throw away. I hemmed a bunch of these and they are bread cloth size.
Towels are a great way to play with color. I'm sure there will be more next year.
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