January Towels and More Progress

I am finding that even though the warp is a bit bright, using the medium light blue or silver as weft turns out looking pretty good. This was threaded as an M W twill. I am treadling the towels either as a straight 1-8 treadling giving uneven points or 1-8-1, resulting in uneven diamond shapes.





I found a few of the finished January towels. I really like the color combinations.

Exploring October

I'm taking a big color leap with this set of towels. Although they look garish, I think they will turn out OK. This has been an interesting experiment.

For this set, I used the random stripe generator, but as with the January towels, I modified the pattern I selected so that the colors were closer in proportion to the picture and values weren't tilted too far to the high value colors - i.e., less red and orange and bright green.

I will be threading these in an "M" twill - 1 to 8; 7-5; 6-8 and back to 1 . The December towels' dornick twill was a bit too choppy, but the diagonal and diamond patterns in the other towels look really good.

We'll have to see.

I may have sold almost all of the January towels without a picture, but I will see if I can find one and post it later. They turned out really great.

January Towels

The next set of towels is the January Picture. It is of Point Betsy in Northern Lower Michigan. It looked all ice and cold, but when wound on as warp, it translated to Fourth of July.


I'm sure that it will be toned down when crossed with a weft of light blue or even white.


I used the Random Stripe Generator, but this time I figured out the proportion of each color in the picture. I then adjusted the stripe width and colors to reflect that proportion. So it's random with help.

I am threading this set as a point twill but weaving it with the treadling from the last set -- a 1-1-1-2-3 twill. I might even attempt diamonds.

Interesting Color Exploration

I finished the ten towels with the "September" colors. They looked much better than I would have expected as I wound the warp. I used yellow, gold, light blue, green and dark brown for the wefts.

These were threaded as a straight draw and treadled in a 1-1-2-3 twill. I wove most of these with a point treadling. A couple were done as a straight twill, but they weren't quite as interesting.

The gold really made the colors look deep and complex. The brown was pretty surprising - the picture doesn't do it justice.

These are not my colors but I would definitely use them again.

September Towels

I picked the September picture to work on next. I'm using more colors, so it was a little more complicated. I did use the Random Stripe Generator, bu this time, I changed the colors so that they were used more in the same proportion as the picture, e.g. more yellow and gold than the red.

I wound the same length of warp - enough for 10 towels. Everything seemed to be fine until I went to thread the heddles. I realized that I had flipped on of the sections. There was a glop of green together.As I was pulling the warp through the heddles, I added some warp threads off the back to separate the overabundance of green. I think it will be ok. After all, it's supposed to be random. It would be so bad if the green were a more perfect fit with the other colors. I'm sure it will work out when woven.

I am threading this set in a straight draw. I am planning to either weave a point or something like the dornick twill treadling I used for the December towels. This way each set will be a little different - in more than just color.

December Towels

Finished weaving the December towels. I cut them apart last night and now all I have to do is hem them. I like the way they turned out, although I think the beat could have been a little stiffer. They are a bit "drapy" for towels.

Here's some detail. It does lok quite complicated, but it isn't really.

December Towels

I have about 6 of the December towels woven. I am making two of each warp color. I'm not sure though if I will use the dark brown as weft. I also think that I might spend more time on the warp stripe designs on later towels. I think this one is too regular - a too even distribution of the colors. They look pretty good and I am anxious to see them off the loom and washed. I'm not sure the colors are ones I would want to have per se though...