Weaving Green

There are a lot of fun weaving structures in the world, but having tried Summer & Winter once, I have had a strong urge to keep playing with it.

I used another name draft to come up with this pattern, but then one of my weaving reference books reminded me that I can use different tie-ups with the same threading to make lots of variations on the same design.  Since I am on a table loom, I don't actually use tie-ups at all, but rather make the variations line by line, as I am doing the actual weaving.  This really opens up a myriad of possibilities for me, and as such, I decided to make a bit of a longer warp and do five different towels.

I am about halfway through the first one, and really can't wait to see how the rest turn out!

More Twill Towels

For the fourth towel, I changed to a different set of weft colours.  This one had less contrast again, with a blue and black weft.  What a change in tone from the previous three towels!  All the colours are still there, but much more muted.

Then I brought in the brightest colour of them all, the light green, and made the fifth towel with all the contrast, in black and green.

Then I did the last one in green and blue, a little less contrast and tonally more similar.

But wait!  I finished the sixth and final towel only to realize I had tons of warp left on the loom.  When I initially planned out the pattern, I thought the magazine allowed for an unnecessarily long warp, and upon getting to this point in the weaving, I realized that I easily had room for another towel.  My first thought was to use the last of each colour to do a really variegated stripey weft, but I was sort of done with swapping shuttles and winding bobbins.  I couldn't bear to waste such a pretty warp, though, all ready to go.  I decided I'd use some spare 10/2 cotton I had, in white, without any stripes at all.  This made something completely different and a bit unexpected and I really really like it.  The colours are softened a bit, and the blocks look like changing transparencies of glass over the stripes of colours.

Now to finish them up!

A Set of Twill Towels

I don't know if it's just because of the change in the weather, but I got a real case of startitis this week, and began a second pair of socks for gifting, an out-of-the-blue artsy knitting concept, and I really have my eye on a new slouchy hat for fall... maybe some fingerless mitts... not to mention this baby from the new BrooklynTweed collection.

But before I get to any of that, I should catch you up on my weaving.  I did get the skully napkins off the loom (seemed like they took forever) but I haven't gotten to hemming and finishing them yet.  Instead, I got really distracted with these babies, a set of dishtowels using a bit of colour and an irregular twill weave to add interest.

There are six colours in the warp, and I chose two of those for the weft of each towel.

The first towel had a red and pink weft.  The two colours didn't have much contrast, but it still looks quite nice:

Then came a towel with an orange and red weft:

Then one with a pink and orange weft.  It looks quite similar to the last one, again since there isn't much difference between the red and pink, but there is still a different tone to it:

That last shot shows the design most clearly, since it's nice and close.  There are warp stripes in six colours, weft stripes in two, and the overall pattern is an alternating 3:1 and 1:3 twill.  The places where the twill changes is offset from the colour stripe changes, which makes the whole thing much more interesting and gives more colours to the eye.  I can't wait to see how much better they all look, once they're washed and ironed.

Next time I'll show you the other weft combinations!

Little Skulls All in a Row

I decided a while ago that something I need in my life is a set of fancy cloth napkins.  It's all because there was a cool project in a recent issue of Handwoven (Mar/Apr 2014) for some napkins with an allover mini-overshot design, and I really fell in love with them.  Of course I had to change everything about the project to make it more 'me' and thus the skully napkins were born.

For non-weavers, "overshot" is just a type of weaving where you weave a base cloth in plain weave (in this case, grey) while making a design within that fabric with another yarn (in this case, black.) The base cloth holds it all together, while the pattern makes it fancy.

I took this particular design from Bertha Gray Hayes' book of mini overshot designs.  She called this one "Gone With the Wind" but when I look at it, I see stacks and stacks of little skulls, like the catacombs of Paris.