Working on towels

I know that I can sell a bunch of towels at the Weavers’ Guild Holiday Sale, so decided that’s what I’d work on next. I warped up the loom with that handpainted cotton shown in my last post and set about weaving. I was hoping that my dye planning worked so that each towel would have all of the colors, ideally only once.

Jack decided to photobomb my first pics, these of the two towels with dark wefts – purple on the left and marine on the right.

Here they are without Jack so you can better see the colors. The warp colors worked out well on these two.

I wove two towels with blue-ish wefts in two different shades; actually teal on the left and baby blue on the right. Again the handpainting worked out pretty well.

I wove another two towels with different yellows for wefts. Again the painting worked fine.

And I wove two towels with natural wefts, one with the 5/2 I’d used for warp, the other with 8/2. These 2, which would have been my favorites, didn’t have the handpainting land quite as well.

Still, I like the overall look of the stripes blending from one color to the next and am likely to do this again in the future.

But not right now. I went for another run of polka dots. Here’s the first towel on the loom. You can see a threading error in the 5th red circle from the right. This wasn’t the only threading error that I had, and when I found this one about 8′′ in, I fixed it and then decided it was time to walk away for the day. You can also see that the use of the yellows, especially the light yellow, wasn’t a great choice. C’est la vie.

Parting shot – my kousa dogwood displaying its lovely red fruits for the fall. In the spring I was wishing I’d chosen a Florida dogwood, but now I’m glad I didn’t; they don’t fruit like this.

September 29th, 2019 |

From start to not-quite-done

After the Elmwood show, at which I had a great time and swell sales, I went on a dyeing jag. I had intended to show you the process from dyeing to completion, but time’s passing by, so I decided to show you what I’ve accomplished so far. With just the first yarn I dyed. (I dyed yarn for 2 additional projects as well.)

The first thing I dyed was some 8/2 tencel. I wound warp lengths for 3 handpainted bouts of 132 ends each, then I wound skeins for 2 more similar-sized bouts, planning to return to my warp vs. skein concept. Here’s what the finished warp chains and skeins looked like. I’m definitely happy with the dyeing, even though they weren’t the colors I had initially envisioned.

Then I measured out those skeins and beamed the yarn, with some black tencel to divide the sections.

Once beamed I sat down at my computer to determine what weave structure and pattern I wanted to use for these two lengths, both planned to be mobi shawls. I decided on an extended Ms and Ws threading and treadling, and used black tencel as weft fo the first piece.

I wanted to change it up a bit for the second length, and after trying a few blues for weft, settled on a royal purple. I only had 20/ in this color, so doubled it for the weft.

At this point I really like both the black and the purple. We’ll see if I have a favorite when they are all done.

I may have some time tomorrow to sew the straight lines to secure the edges before wet finishing these two pieces. I doubt I’ll get much further than that in the process.

Oh yeah, I also made some yummy pear jam with some free pears, thanks to a generous person in my neighborhood. Never made pear jam before, and it is DELICIOUS! I brought a little half-pint jar to the person with the pear trees.

And I gave Jack a haircut with a pair of scissors. Some trimming/cleaning up has happened since this photo, but it’s still definite done with scissors, not a hair trimmer thingy.

September 12th, 2019 | 

Finished, changed, and started

Shortly after my last post I finished the two mobius wraps. Here’s the one with the purple weft.

I was surprised that I preferred the one with the black weft.

Then I quickly converted two rayon chenille shawls, which hadn’t attracted lots of attention at my shows, into mobis. I wove thes shawls 12-18 months ago, so it was time to do the conversion. Here’s I’ve Got The Blues.

And then I did Caribbean.

You can see that I didn’t spend much time getting the wraps to lay correctly on Dolly. I have to get outside at the right time to have any shade in my yard and bright sun is way too bright. Then I have to deal with the the uneven-ness of my lawn and the breeze/wind, so I just snapped rather quickly. Since I’m not putting any of these up for sale on the web, it’s all okay with me.

I packaged up these two rayon chenille wraps, the purple Brilliant Gemtones, an open front cardigan, four cowls, and a scarf an mailed them off to the Copper Shop on the Roycroft Campus. The Campus attracts a lot of visitors between now and the end o the year and my work has sold reasonably well there. Plus my inventory there was low and I won’t have any other solo shows ti next summer, so this made lots of sense.

Meanwhile, I know that towels sell well at the Weavers’ Guild Holiday Sale, so last month I hand painted some cotton in preparation. I started with some nondescript pinky-taupey yarn that’s been hanging around unused for a few years, and was happy with the way it turned out. Although there are several colors, they’re all somehow subdued, almost earthy, and I like them

My plan was to hand paint in approximately 6′′ sections of color so that each towel would have one length each color. We’ll see how well that works out.

I decided on a braided twill. I didn’t have any natural or white cotton in 8/2, so I used what I had on hand – 5/2. I sett the 8/2 han painted cotton at 24 EPI and the natural 5/2 cotton at 16 EPI. It’s working out okay. Here’s the first towel on the loom, showing the progression of the colors.

I’m now on towel #5, each with a different weft color, and so far the dyeing is working out pretty well. Here’s a close up of the weave structure. This one has a baby blue weft.

Enough time spent in front of my computer for now – back to the loom!

September 23rd, 2019 |