Category: Weave Page 21 of 34

Tea Towels!

On 29 Jul, 2010

A few towels for towel exchanges and gifts...

And a few to keep...

This all started when I bought my cottage a few years ago. I wanted a mishmash of handwoven guest towels in the bathrooms, just like Suzanne. I love all the different towels she had accumulated over the years from various guild sales that she used as guest towels. There’s a fresh pile every morning in the bathroom during the classes taught at her house.

I’m impatient. I want that pile now *.Â The only way I could see that happening is if I start a towel exchange. Get the maximum variety out of each towel warp by exchanging one or two towels from each warp. Â Either that, or spend a lot of money at the Whidbey Weaver’s Guild annual sale, which I also did.

So, I proposed a little exchange with a Laura and Donna in my guild. That was 2 years ago. I bought a kit from Halcyon, and then it sat. That is, until this summer. I put it on the loom in June and wove it off. It was another month before I pulled the sewing machine out and finished them.

The kit came with yarn and a draft pattern — Four Thread Herringbone from Davison’s book. I had a lot of fun playing with the different treadling. Each towel uses a different treadling. I may have repeated one or two of my favorites.

This was fun. Changing out the weft color and the treadling order, I was able to get very different towels off of the same warp. I might get that mishmash sooner rather than later!

Sampler Towel

But for this one, I mixed it up. I inserted all the different treadlings into the towel and used all the different colors in the weft. This also helped me finish up all the partial bobbins of yarn. This will be a fun reminder of the project.

Specs:

Halycon Tea Towel Kit in Driftwood colorway
Yarn: Cottolin, 1 spool each of white, natural, blue and brown
Weave Structure: Four Thread Herringbone; p.25 of Davison’s book
Shafts: 4
Reed: 10 dent
EPI: 20
Warp Length: 8.5 yards
Ends: 384 (ends and color order provided in kit instructions)
On Loom: 18.9″ W x 34-35″ L for each towel; 7 towels plus a partial (square towel in picture)
After Finishing: 17″ W x 27.5″ L (includes 1/2″ rolled hem, so 29.5″ long before hemming)

* Yes, you can stop snickering. It took me two years to make these, so “now” is relative.

P.S. This is likely the last time that the towels for keeping will see an iron…

Another Pleated Scarf

By Ann

On 16 Jun, 2010

In FO, Spin, Weave

Wool/Cashmere/Silk Pleated Scarf

Are you tired of this series yet? If not, here’s the next (and last for a while, maybe) pleated scarf.

Let’s go for eye candy first. Click on the image for the full sized fuzzy goodness (click again on the new page to enlarge).

Yes, it looks a lot like the last pleated scarf (at the bottom of the post). But that one was in preparation for this one. What’s so special about this one? The yarn in the green/blue stripes is handspun Spirit Trail Fiberworks 50/50 silk/cashmere, purchased at SOAR 2009. I had just enough yarn to make one scarf with minimal sampling.

Yarn Source: Spirit Trail Fiberworks
Fiber Content: 50/50 cashmere/bombyx (it doesn’t appear that Jen carries this blend anymore)
Colorway: unknown (I lost it at SOAR)
Plies: 2
WPI: 40 (pre-finishing), 32 (post finishing)
Yardage: 580 (pre-finishing), 578 (post finishing); I used 504 yards for the scarf so I have a little bit leftover for a little something.
Weight: 2 oz.

As soon as I saw Anne‘s scarf, I knew that this yarn was destined to become a pleated scarf. I also knew that I had to do a lot of sampling before I started to wind on for this scarf.

Luckily, I had some Lisa Souza 100% wool lace weight in nearly identical colorway. Making a scarf with the wool would tell me if the grey weft would detract too much from the lovely blues and greens in the yarn.

Loom set up is the same in both scarves, as is the weft yarn (light grey tight spun cashmere single from ColourMart). I was, however, able to get about 36 ppi on this one.

On loom

As you can see, the grey did mute the colors somewhat, but did not alter it too much.

All stiff and unappealing, fresh off the loom

Unwashed sample and lightly finished scarf

I washed the scarf gently in the sink and line dried. I tossed it in the dryer briefly when it was almost dry to full it up. As you can see, it’s still kind of stiff and no halo from the cashmere. I was too gentle with it. The reason was that I didn’t want it to shrink as much as the last scarf.

Yesterday, I put it in a bin with extremely hot water (1/2 hot tap, 1/2 near boiling water). I don’t have a dedicated fiber toilet bowl plunger, so I used the only thing available in my kitchen — a potato masher. I abused it for about 15 minutes with a couple of dunks in cold water in between. After spinning it dry, I tossed it in the dryer with a towel. The halo finally came out.

Loom Length: 76″
Finished Length: 74″

I only lost 2″ in length. Why only 2″? In retrospect, it made perfect sense. This yarn has high silk content which prevented it from shrinking like the last scarf, which was 100% wool (blue/green stripes only). Duh!

So, what’s next for the loom? I don’t know yet. Suggestions?

Towels

By Ann

On 1 Jun, 2010

In Weave

While I was up at the cottage last week, I decided to put a little warp on the Gilmore Gem II. Next thing I know, 6 towels were woven off…

Specs:

Warp: 8/2 unmercerized cotton in natural
Weft: 8/2 unmercerized cotton in grey, sage and blue (2 towels each)
Draft: Dissimilar Squares Twill from Handweaving.net (#60967)

Why this pattern? I realized as I sat down to plan my warp that I didn’t have any of my weaving pattern books at the cottage. Handweaving.net to the rescue.* I picked this draft because it is very similar to the one I started to use for this scarf (scarf on the far right). It’s not exactly the same, so there might be another set of sample (towels) coming up. I still want to explore that pattern.

click to enlarge

Here they are again, washed and hemmed.

Loom size: 15.4″ x 25″ (plus hem)
Finished size: 13″ x 23.5″

I’m quite pleased with them. They will go onto the boat as hand towels in the head. The current towels are cream colored terry cloth and have sometimes been confused with my cleaning rags.

These should be distinctive enough that they can’t be confused with the ones that you wipe down the toilet or muddy footprints with! The added bonus is that they can do double duty as dish towels. I will need to make more of these to stock the boat with. I can go through this stack in one cruise out.

click to enlarge

I sewed in a loop of cotton twill tape onto one edge of the towel so that they can be hung onto a hook, if desired. While I was at it, I printed customized labels to iron onto them.

I printed my “labels” onto a sheet of Avery T-Shirt Transfer and cut them down to size. Â These were then ironed onto 1/2″ cotton twill tape. I had the transfers leftover from another project. I’m not sure that these will hold up to the rough washing/tumble dry cycles that towels go through, but they are quick to make and I didn’t have to commit to 100 or 1000 labels.

These labels look interesting too. I might give these a try too at some point.

While at the spa on Sunday, the spa/resort bathrooms had a stack of rolled up thick washcloths instead of paper towels. I want to do that for my bathroom at the cottage. A pretty stack of handwoven single use towels for visitors (and a convenient laundry hamper nearby).

* This is a wonderful site with lots of fabulous public domain drafts. Think Project Gutenberg for weaving drafts. You can read it online or pull it into a weaving program capable of reading WIF files and make adjustments. Weavolution has a great article on WIFs.