More Colours in Twill

The last few towels flew off the loom, and I pretty much flew by the seat of my pants in deciding what colour combinations to use.

For the fifth towel, I went with one in kelly green and magenta, which is definitely one of my favourites of the whole bunch.  It's really bright and I like how the colours work together.

With the sixth towel, I realized that I was running out of towels to weave, and I wanted to get back to orange, since I had really liked the previous orange one a lot.  Since I had done it with magenta already (and didn't want to do anything too tonally similar like the dark red) I matched it up with the dark purple.  I like this one a lot too.

The other light colour I'd only used once was yellow, and while I toyed with using it against the kelly green or against the orange, I was afraid that they just wouldn't have enough contrast to be visually interesting.  I went with magenta instead, since both of my previous magenta towels turned out so pretty.  In the end, I think it's a bit too similar to the yellow/red combo (until you see them next to each other they look pretty close) but je ne regrette rien.

I had to get them off the loom quickly because I have a time-sensitive project to weave - Handwoven magazine is taking submissions for designs for a new e-book and I wanted to weave up a sample to submit it - but once that is all done, I will hem and wash and iron these towels and show them off as a set.

Can't Stop Won't Stop

After doing the last colourful set of towels, I really wanted to do another set in some different colours, and keep playing with the concept.  I thought it would be fun to do a set in Mardi Gras colours (purple, green, and gold) so chose a couple of shades of each and used a weaving program on the computer to come up with a point twill stripe design that I liked.  In the end, I also added a deep red to help balance out the darks and lights in the design.

Once I had the green summer and winter towels off the loom, I couldn't wait to get started on this warp, since it's so colourful and fun (and the weaving is comparatively mindless.)

My initial plan was to do seven towels in total, with each of the first three towels in one of the three colour groups.  I started with one in Kelly Green and Pistachio.  You can see it at the bottom of the photo.  The two colours are both relatively light, and there wasn't a lot of contrast between the stripes.  It made an overall wash of green over the colours of the whole warp, which I didn't hate, but it wasn't what I was imagining.  I decided to nix my initial plan to follow up with a purple/magenta striped towel and an orange/yellow towel.  I wanted more contrast between the stripes to make the towels more visually interesting.

With that in mind, I did the second towel in orange and magenta stripes.  This one had a lot of visual pop and I was really happy with how it turned out.  The colours have a good amount of contrast and they give the warp colours a lot of variation.  I like how the twill diamonds alternate between columns when the weft stripes alternate between dark/light.  In the green towel, they only show up distinctly in the dark warp stripes, since the greens are both so light.

For the third towel, I stayed with high contrast and did a towel with stripes in Pistachio green and a deep Purple.  Again, I think the contrast makes it much better and I like the green better here.

I went with yellow and deep red stripes for the fourth towel.  It is only subtly different than the previous one, but definitely still pleasing to the eye.

That passes the halfway point for the towels, since there should be a total of seven.  I have a couple of colour combinations planned for the last ones, but to be honest, I'm actually reconsidering doing the yellow/orange combo... and even the purple/magenta...  what do you think?

Meet Miss Bennet

After finishing my weaving class a few weeks ago, I knew that I needed to get myself a loom of my own. I spent some time looking at various types of looms online, mostly table looms, since who has the space (or the money) for a floor loom? Not me, anyway. I bid on a couple of used looms on ebay, but didn't win one. Finally I resigned myself to spending the big bucks to get a new one. After some more poking around online, I finally decided on the one I wanted. The Louet Jane is a bit different than the LeClerc Dorothy table looms we used in class, but different in good ways. It's nearly twice as wide, to make wider projects (e.g. rugs, shawls, cloth to sew with) and has twice as many shafts, to make more complex weaves. The heddles are quiet texsolv instead of noisy wire, and the shaft toggles won't give me carpal tunnel. Basically I saw it as a simple and practical loom to learn on, but one that will grow with me, so I won't need to replace it with a more complex loom any time soon. Plus it is collapsible so it won't always take up my whole kitchen table (like it is today.) P.S. I have to give props to Shuttleworks in Calgary, who had the loom in my apartment 48 hours after I ordered it from them.

There are a lot of famous Janes. My Jane loom is as clever as Jane Austen, as beautiful as Jayne Mansfield, as tough as Jane Cannary, as artsy as Jane Siberry (sorry, Issa), as inspiring as Jane Yolen, as no-nonsense as Jayne Cobb.

More than anything, I think my Jane embodies Jane Bennet from Austen's Pride and Prejudice -- she is beautiful, smart, practical, sweet-tempered, quiet, lovable, and always wants to see the best in everyone.

Can you tell I'm in love?