Christmas Towels

Huckaback Towels

I made huckaback towels for Christmas. I started with the towels on the left. They were based on the Keep It Simple towels from Top Ten Towels On Four Shafts, I made some slight modifications. I decided to make sibling towels for when I wanted to give a set instead of a singleton.

Huckaback Border

While weaving Keep It Simple, I kept thinking that it would be pretty as a horizontal border. I redrafted it and  created a 8 thread selvedge in plain weave, so this turned into a 6 shaft pattern instead of four.

For the huckaback border, I started with 2.5 repeats, but switched 3.5 repeats because I think it looks a bit better.

The strangest thing happened in the wash with the huckaback border with plain weave. The plain weave section had these really weird crazed lines all over them. (click for bigger)

I’m not sure what caused them. Perhaps they creased up in the washer in the initial wash and I didn’t take it out fast enough. I was out running errands while it was in the wash. I doubt that it will shift anymore since the spinning oils have been washed out and the yarn has bloomed.

I wonder if this wouldn’t have happened if the sett was a little bit closer (24 instead of 20 epi). I have woven several sets of 8/2 cotton towels at 20 epi and not have had this problem, but then, they’ve always been a twill variant.

Oh well, these towels definitely have a “homey” feel.  I hope the recipients enjoy using them.

I kept one towel back for myself. Again, while weaving the 2nd set of towels, I wondered what it would look like if I did the border in color and wove the rest in the same color as the warp. I really like the contrast. I would definitely do more of these. The only problem with this one towel was that it was the end of my warp. I had to really work at getting the shuttle through the shed. In the end, I had to finally call uncle at an inch or so short of what I needed to keep it symmetrical. But really, I doubt that my dishes will notice the difference.