Fall is a time to get back to the loom. Although September isn't really very cool here in the foothills, some of our weavers have been busy.
Mardi wove these colorful towels as part of an exploration in Rosepath. She used a Lunatic Fringe kit with 10/2 cotton to create these bright colors.
Mardi also created these rainbow colored towels using cotton she bought from another fiber person selling part of their stash. Here's her description of the project:
"I have a large amount of non-descript pale blue cotton yarn,
which I suspect is about a 5/2. It was
the perfect yarn to experiment with warp painting . I wound the warp into 2 parts, striping it
with navy 8/2 cotton which I was planning to use as weft. I laid both warp bundles out identically, or
so I believed, and proceeded to dye them in a rainbow pattern. When I beamed them on, I found that they
weren’t exactly identical. The finished
result can be summed up as being “two in one towels”. When folded in half lengthwise, you get two
different colors, depending on which side is facing out.
Technicalities: The sett is 20 EPI and the PPI is about
26. There are a total of 478 threads (I
think, as I don’t seem to be a very good note taker). The width in the reed was
23.9 (including floating selvages) and the length on the loom was 34”,
including allowance for hems. The finished dimensions are 28 3/4 “ by 19”. The draft I used was Point Threading over 8
which can be found in Dixon on pages 80-81.
The biggest fatal flaw that I encountered was finding that
the 100% cotton sewing thread that I used in the hems did not shrink at the
same rate as the 8/2 cotton, which gave me some flare to work with when
hemming."
 |
| Mardi's Dyed Towels with original yarn |
 |
| Another view of Mardi's Dyed Towels |
Mardi attended a Jane Stafford class on color and design. She shared her lovely color samples with us.
 |
| Samples from Jane Stafford Class |
 |
| More Samples from Jane Stafford Class |
Eileen shared a poncho she made from fabric woven with sock yarn and black 8/2 tencel as the weft. She was using up left over sock yarns in a random striping pattern. The design is an undulating twill #219 in Carol Strickler's book, "A Weaver's Book of 8-Shaft Patterns".
 |
| Eileen's Ponch |
 |
| Eileen's Tencel Scarf |
She also shared a scarf that was woven with 8/2 tencel in the warp and weft. The weave structure was also from Strickler's book - #171.
 |
| Jeanne's Double Weave Color Study |
Jeanne used cottolin in a double weave color sampler. She is planning to weave placemats and used this color and weave piece to help pick out her favorite designs.
Ingrid shared a scarf woven with sock yarn in a point twill pattern.
We are looking forward to more products of our looms next month.
