Allover Stars Towels

I have come to realize that one of my blogging problems is that I love the moment of the reveal so much that I often forget to post in-progress photos. Here we are again, with a project that I didn't get around to mentioning until it was already completed. Yes, it's another set of woven towels, but the last ones I'll subject you to, for a while.


After I finished the Striped Star towels, I folded up my loom and worked for a bit on a quilt top that I wanted to finish (oops, there's another work-in-progress I haven't shown off, yet.) I had several woven scarves bouncing around in my brain, but I decided to put them off until I wove one more set of towels. That's because I realized that I could just tie the warp for these towels onto the warp from the Striped Star towels (very easily because it is the same yarn at the same sett and threading) which saved me the effort of having to put 450-ish ends through the reed and heddles individually, and also saved a bit of length in the warp. Okay, that was probably greek to most of you who aren't weavers, but in simplest terms, it saved me a day or two (or four) of effort by tying the warp on. That way, I could get to the weaving part a lot sooner. I got it tied on with virtually no problems, and was weaving right away. They went quickly, with each towel taking about two days to finish.


When I mentioned to my sister that I was going to do towels with allover stars, rather than just intermittent stars where the stripes cross, she said: "Oh, won't that be awfully busy?" (She clearly takes after my mother, who says that every hexagon quilt I make looks awfully busy.) I knew it wouldn't, and thought that it would be sort of like a gingham, which isn't busy at all, but has a pleasing repetitive design. As I was weaving the first of the star towels, I realized that the threading for them was the same as the threading for gingham. The sett (how many threads are in one inch of weaving) was closer for the star design than I would want it for plain-woven gingham, but I decided to risk it, for one of the four towels, anyway. It did end up a little stiffer than the other towels, and I couldn't quite get the squares to be square (because the warp threads were a bit too close to let the weft thread push far enough between them.) Still: so cute.


I hemmed the four towels by hand and then threw them in for a machine wash and tumble dry. They shrunk a bit, and the weave collapsed in, like a waffle-weave would. I steam ironed them and they flattened out nicely and have a soft absorbent hand, like the previous set did. Oh, and did I mention that the back of the towels has the reverse design: white stars on a purple background?