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The plan was to weave 3 simple dishtowels. The inspiration was 2 beautiful skeins of hand painted linen - Linen Lace by Claudia, color way Ocean Depth. I have used this yarn before in a different colorway. Last time I combined a huck lace and a twill weave, and I wanted to do something a little different this time. I decided to keep the structure simple - plain weave - and make it all about the color.
I used Fiberworks to design a stripe pattern where I had a background of white with stripes of the variegated linen that were bordered by narrow stripes of the solid colored cottolin. In the draft, the gray areas represent the variegated yarn. Shown below is about 1/3 of the draft. I fussed with the size of the variegated stripes until I was sure I would have linen for a warp for the 3 towels. What is important is that some of the variegated linen areas were 2-3" wide - more about that later. 
So the towels went onto the loom and wove up very quickly. I only got about 16 ppi with this very fine weft which had me questioning whether I should have sett the warp at 24 epi instead of 27. I wove the first towel with white 16/2 cottolin, the second with aqua, and the third with lavender. I definitely liked the white the best. It was very fresh looking and did not wash out the warp colors at all, whereas the aqua and lavender barely had any effect on the overall color of the towels other than making them less crisp looking.
Overall I was happy with the towels. They have a nice, soft hand which will only get softer with successive washings. There is much room for improvement, however, on these simple plain weave towels Lessons learned:
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Final day of the challenge. Odds and ends. The first picture is of a large bag that was made from a piece of woven wool that was felted and sewn by hand into a tote bag. The straps are made from a technique called ply split braiding. The initials LOL are for my company Lamb on the Loom. The second picture shows a basket that is also done in ply split technique (pattern compliments of Louise French). And the third picture shows 3 baskets made in the same technique (pattern compliments of Linda Hendrickson).
Three scarves for today. The first is a tencel scarf using rust, turquoise and a variegated yarn that results in some nice iridescence. The second one is one of my favorite scarves that ises a feathery twill weave with a variegated tencel with highlights of solid cotton pinstripes. And the third is a silk scarf that I dyed the warp for.
Doubleweave in its various forms. The first piece is a recent table runner. Woven in doubleweave overshot, it is 100% cotton and very practical. The other 2 pieces are older and examples of my rare adventures in "art" pieces". They are both doubleweave pick up, fondly know in the weaving world as "slow cloth", because they take so long to weave. The first of the two is a color gamp. The second one is what I refer to as a portrait of my son when he was little: he is self destructing and getting himself back together, which he did frequently every day. Now I am happy to say he is all grown up and has his act together.  Doubleweave Overshot Runner
Today I am posting 3 shawls. The first is a Bronson Lace shawl woven in turquoise and light gray tencel. The second is a silk shawl woven on 16 harnesses on one of the rare warps that I dyed myself. The third picture is a pair of tencel shawls woven in cinnamon and rust tencel in a block twill.  Bronson Lace Tencel Shawl
The challenge was to post 3 items I have made each day for 5 days on Facebook. I will post them here too. So I begin with rugs. The first rug was woven for my mother, a wool Krokbragd rug. The second rug is actually a wool saddle blanket (I learned too late that horses don't actually like fringe - ha ha). And the third rug is my "ratio rug" so called because it was made in the proportions allowed from the leftover yarn from the before mentioned saddle blanket (I had all of 3 yards of yarn left over when I was done). The second part of this challenge is to challenge some else to do this each day, but instead I think I will challenge my Triangle Weavers Guild Facebook group to participate. So the challenge is ON!
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Pattie LambI have been happily weaving since my son was born in 1988. Archives
June 2023
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