Scarf for Jill

It has been more than a year since I bought a 4 shaft extension kit for my Louet Spring. Life happened, and I just recently installed it, giving me 12 shafts in all. My plan is to work through "Exploring Multishaft Design", but first, I wanted to make something. I decided on a straight threading. I used a plaited tie up from Bonnie Inouye's "Advance!" workshop handout. I played with several treadlings and chose advancing points. I first tried to weave a scarf with slubby rayon, but the texture of the yarn hid the pattern. I cut off that warp and used Bambu 12 instead. I sleyed it at 30 epi. I used the color cilantro for the warp and coral for the weft. I am trying to weave scarves for all of the girls in my family, and those colors made me think of my cousin Jill.

I was a little anxious about whether I could comfortably use 14 treadles, but that was no problem at all. The loom squeaked some when I treadled, so I used a little silicone spray on the rollers. That did the trick.

I actually remembered to measure the scarf before I gave it away. It was 5 5/8" x 70 1/2" on the loom and 5 3/8" x 67 1/2" after finishing. I added some of the coral yarn to the cilantro fringe. The cilantro by itself just stood out way too much.

I had a hard time getting any good pictures of it because they yarn reflected the light so much. Here is a shot showing both sides:
And here is a picture showing the front in more detail:
I was pleased with the way it turned out, and, more importantly, so was Jill!

Organic Cotton Towels - M's and O's

I've fallen behind on my record keeping, so now it's time to catch up! A couple of months ago, I wove a set of kitchen towels in M's and O's, using a 10/2 organic cotton sampler from Chamomile Connection. I needed to make some gift towels, so I wove a set of four. Two were for me to give as (another!) wedding gift. Another was for my grandma to give to her cleaning lady. Grandma is quite fond of her, and she has admired a couple of towels that I have made for Grandma. The last, I kept for myself.
I was inspired to weave these some scarves in a recent issue of Handwoven. They were M's and O's with different stripes in the warp. I thought that would be a good way to use the little bits of different colors that were in the sampler.

Here is a shot of the towels on the loom. The colors are really subtle.

And here are a couple of the towels after washing in hot water, detergent, and washing soda. The colors are much more vibrant. I used a different color of weft on each towel.