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.

Canvas weave wedding gift

A friend of mine got married a couple of weeks ago. Her engagement was very short, and she didn't give us much notice before the wedding. I'm glad the reception was a week after the wedding, so I had a chance to finish the towels I was making her. There wasn't much time to spend designing the towels as I would have liked, so I just chose a draft from Davison that I had used for towels before. I had woven it before and liked it. It had an interesting pattern and used just one shuttle, so I went with it. It was a canvas weave, Swarthmore Check, on page 69. I used 8/2 unmercerized cotton in green and beige. The label says "KARDED COT 8/2POE". The yarn was pretty friendly to use. The only thing I noticed about it was in the semi-plainweave hems, there was a ton of tracking. That might be fun to play with another time. The towels shrunk noticeably after I washed them, but, of course, I forgot to measure them before I gave them away. I took a piece from the sample and made a card similar to the ones here, but with a heart-shaped opening. I forgot to take a picture of the card, too! I did manage to snap a couple of pics of the towels, so I will leave you with them.

Christmas Cards

I turned those summer & winter bookmarks I was making into Christmas cards. I only finished seven before Christmas, just enough to send to the board members of our guild and to my weaving teacher.

I just stuck the bookmark to the front of a card with some double sided tape and rubber stamped "Peace on Earth" next to it. I thought they turned out fairly well, and a couple of recipients told me how pleased they were. :)

I learned a couple of things. First, I'm glad I used a loom with texsolve heddles because I still several warp ends break. Second, I found out that I didn't really do my research on S&W very well before I started. I had mentioned that I planned to try treadling in x's, o's, singles, and duckagang-fashion. Well, it turns out that real S&W has vertical "blocks" that consist of four picks, ABAB. I designed these with vertical "blocks" that consisted of just two picks, AB. So I just treadled as singles and went with it. If I had more time, I might have played around with it some more, but that darn calendar kept me moving. I think if I weave Christmas cards again, I will weave something that goes a little faster!

Guild Challenge

This year, our guild's design challenge consisted of drawing three cards. Each one gave instructions with respect to weave structure, color, or fiber. We all had to weave something based on the cards we drew. I had to do plainweave, no more than two colors, and weft heavier than the warp. My first thought after I drew those cards was, "yuck, how boring!" I decided that to make it a little more interesting, I would bend the rules a little, and use several values of one color. Since I have very little experience dying, I consulted "Hands on Dying" and decided to follow the instructions for the first project in that book, which should yield four values of the same color, using Rit or Cushing dye. I thought it would be fun to do some clasped weft weaving with the light and dark colors of weft.

To meet the grist requirements for the warp and weft, I chose some natural 10/2 cotton as warp and some worsted weight cotton as weft. I figured with a heavier weft, I would make some placemats or a table runner. I bought Hobby Lobby brand worsted weight cotton, and I was pretty impressed with it. It is much softer (and I think nicer) than sugar 'n cream cotton, and on sale, it cost less for me to buy several skeins of the Hobby Lobby cotton than it would bave cost to buy a cone of the same weight of sugarn 'n cream. For the dye, I chose Rit in Apple Green.

Anyway, I took the heavy cotton, skeined it, and dyed it according to the instructions in the book. I left the warp cotton natural. A couple of things happened when I did the dying, and, please, keep in mind that I am a very inexperienced dyer. First, the difference in value of each skein was barely discernable. I suspect that this was because the dye I chose to use had a relatively light value to begin with. Since I needed to get moving on the project to meet the due date, I decided just to use what I had and weave something a little plainer without the clasped weft.

The other thing that happened during the dyeing was that when I skeined the yarn, I tied the choke ties too tight. This left some very light spots throughout the skein. Even though this was a mistake, it worked to my advantage. Since the idea of using light and dark yarns to do clasped weft was out, the light spots in the yarn added some interest.

Then I started weaving a placemat in plainweave. It was just OK. The worst part was the selvedges. I don't normally weave with such heavy yarns, and had a horrible time getting nice selvedges. I decided that one placemat of this was enough to fulfill the guild challenge requirements and that I would weave a runner in a different structure. At that point, I wished that I had threaded for rosepath instead of 1, 2, 3, 4. I really didn't want to rethread, so I consulted Davison's book to see what else I could do with that threading. I wove a couple of samples and settled on Joseph France's "Ribs Three & One" on page 7. This was like a plainweave, except three of the warp ends acted as one. I liked the way this looked a lot better, and for some reason, the selvedges looked a lot better with this structure. I'm sure I didn't do anything differently, so I'm not sure what made the difference.

The runner looked fine, but I don't see myself doing much more like that. I'm looking forward to getting back to weaving with some finer yarns. I do think, though, that something similar might be nice for some hand towels since it's nice and soft. I may have to try drying my hands on the runner to see if it's absorment enough. :)

Here are the four skeins after being dyed. You can see a little difference in value, but not much.

Here is the finished placemat, yucky selvedges, and all.

Here is the runner on the loom.

And here is the finished runner.

Slow Weaving

I keep hearing about how hot slow art is right now. I think that just about any handweaving and handspinning could be considered slow, but what I'm working on now is ultra-slow! I'm weaving summer and winter bookmarks with 20/2 cotton warp and tabby weft and 10/2 cotton pattern weft on a table loom. It is sett at 36 epi. I chose the table loom for a couple of reasons. First, it's a louet, so it has a raddle that's suited to very fine warp. Second, I like the texsolve heddles for fine warps. If I were to weave this on a floor loom, I would need to use a skeleton tie-up, which would slow down my weaving rhythm considerably, anyway.

This is my first experience with weaving summer and winter. I wanted to make some Christmas gifts, so I designed a draft with little pine trees. I'm thankful to a member of our guild, who put on a program last year about designing with blocks. I had read about this before and vaguely understood how to do it, but to see it explained in person made it much clearer to me. After I had settled on my final design, I was perusing WeaveZine and found a draft there with Christmas trees. I'm glad I found it after I made my own design. While it would have saved me time to use an existing draft, it was good to go through the exercise of designing my own. Besides, I like mine a little better :)

So far, I have one bookmark woven, shown below. It is in the "singles" treadling order, as described by Strickler in her 8-shaft pattern book. My plan is to weave at least one bookmark each in singles, x's, o's, and dukagang-fashion.

Dragonfly Dreams

For our guild's entry at Midwest Weavers' Conference, we all wove baby blankets to donate to a local hospital. The hospital suggested that blankets in deep and bright colors were welcome, as many would be going to African American and Hispanic families. To me, that sounded like an invitation to step outside of my box and have some fun. So I went to my local weaving shop, bought three cones of cotton in some of the brightest colors I could find, and played with some design ideas on the computer. I was delighted when I realized that using two of the colors (Pacific Blue and Caribbean) in the warp and the other (Magenta) in the weft resulted in iridescence. I took a draft from the Strickler book, turned it, and took out a few ends to come up with a heart shaped twill because the theme of the conference was Weaving in the Heart-land. I called the blanket "Dragonfly Dreams" because of the iridescence and because I love alliterations. Here are a couple of views of the blanket on the loom and one of the finished blanket:

New Placemats

In a recent episode of Weavecast, Syne Mitchell discussed the drudgery of finishing your weaving, and I could totally relate. I get so excited about the transformation that takes place on the loom that I kind of forget to look forward to the transformation that will take place in the washer and dryer. I took these placemats off the loom weeks ago and just finished them today. Although I've woven and wet finished quite a bit, I am still always amazed by the appearance and texture of the finished fabric compared to the web.


This was my first attempt at overshot. I used M.P. Davison's Valley Forge Dogwood with a just-okay border that I designed. I used 10/2 and 5/2 mercerized cotton, so they would stand up to some abuse. I'm not thrilled with the way the border turned out, but I haven't had much experience designing drafts. If I had to change anything about the placemats, I would change the sett (27 epi is a little close) make them a little shorter. They're not bad though, and all-in-all, I'm pleased with them. I enjoyed the rhythm of overshot, and it was a lot of fun to watch the pattern develop. I can't say that overshot is my new favorite weave structure, but it is something I'll do once in a while.

Also, I wanted to share some of the view from my backyard:


Since I don't have much room on my property for growing things, I was so excited to see the crab apple blossoming on the land owned by the county. I'm having a lot of fun seeing what kind of plants are popping up around the house; although, I seem to have an over-abundance of hostas already...

Painted Warp

Today I finished a scarf from a pre-made painted warp (made by Interlacements and sold by Tabby Tree Weaver). The warp was made of cotton with strands of slubby rayon. I wasn't thrilled by the way the cotton and rayon behaved together in the warp, but I am pleased with the result. The sett was 24 epi, which might

have been a little close for this yarn in plain weave in most cases, but it worked well here, showing the colors of the warp nicely. This is going to be a birthday present for my cousin Joy, and I think these colors will

suit her.

I wove another scarf from this warp in a twill and gave it to

my grandma for Christmas. She loooooooved it... So much, in fact, that she asked me to weave some scarves for her to give to her sisters and a couple girlfriends for next Christmas. How many are some? In this case, nine. Yes, that's a lot! But since it was for my Grandma, and since she was giving me a year to do it, well, I couldn't really say no. Besides, I have a plan. If I weave them all in 5/2 rayon, straight twill, and three scarves per warp, it should be doable. I'll post more on that as I get it done.