October's Towel

Ms & Os weave, 40/2 linen (bleached & unbleached), 30 epi/ppi.  The photo is of the towel after hemming and wet-finishing and ironing.  I really like this one; I may have to explore this structure further.

2014 Award Winner Fabric Appearing as Cushion Covers

I'm turning my Updraft, Downdraft fabric into giant accent-pillow covers.  These are big; they fit a 24"x24" pillow form.  Cotton, hand-dyed, double weave with sprang.  The colors grade from saturated to shades and tints, so each cover is different.  Hand-dyed linen backing, zipper closure.

The fabric is the 1st Place winner of the Handweavers Guild of America Convergence 2014 Yardage Exhibit Ebb & Flow.  It also won the Virginia Harvey Award for Use of Color from the Seattle Weavers Guild.

They'll be available for sale at the upcoming events below, and online after that.

SCHG Weaving & Fiber Festival
Sunday, November 2, 2014
10 a.m. - 4 p.m.
Torrance Cultural Arts Center, Torrance CA

Designing Weavers Holiday Sale
Saturday & Sunday, November 22 & 23, 2014
10am to 4pm each day.
Women's Club of Sierra Madre
550 W. Sierra Madre Blvd., Sierra Madre, CA

October TotM - Ms & Os

I think this is my favorite towel so far of these.  Can you see the resemblance to a stripedy kitty?

Leno waves - a seasick fabric?

Leno blocks threaded in straight draw order and tied & treadled in a 2/2 twill sequence are making funky wavy lines in my weft.  The lines look irregular when examined by themselves, but there is an overall diagonal pattern when viewed from farther away.

Combined with the color, it makes me think of the ocean.  Does it make you queasy to look at?

October's Puzzler Continues - tie-up and treadling

Okay, so halfway through threading this towel, I realized I should have taken a closer look at the photo in the article.  There are more than 7 repeats across the towel.  In fact it looks like there are eleven.














So the repeat must be six of the threading units from the middle of the profile, with the other 5 at the edges as balance.  6 x 11 + 5 = 71.  Oh, well; I am making a different design!

If you are weaving this project and want it to look like the photo, I think this 11x profile draft to the right here will do it, rather than the 7x one I put in the previous post.  Use the same threading key from the previous post, substituting the 8-thread units for the blocks A and B.

When looking at the treadling sequence, I'm meeting with similar confusion as I had with the threading.  There is no indication of which part to repeat.  Not the whole thing?  It's not symmetrical and doesn't seem to relate to the threading.  The photo shows a design that looks like a "squared" plaid.  The threading has only 24 ends of the bleached linen in a stripe, yet this treadling is showing 44 picks of the bleached.









I've made a treadling sequence that "squares off" the 7x threading that I used.

And if you're using the 11x threading, this sequence should square it off.

October's Towel - Ms & Os & a Dilemma

October's weave is Ms & Os, which contrasts plain weave areas with areas of fairly long floats in a weft rep, causing side-to-side deflection in the woven fabric.  It uses the now-familiar 40/2 linen set at 30 epi, but this time in contrasting stripes of both the natural unbleached color and the bleached ivory.

But the draft is a puzzler.  I am not sure what Barrett can have meant.  Here's an image of the profile draft she gave.  There is no indication of what portion of this design is to be repeated across the width of the towel.

Each square represents a threading unit that is 8 threads wide.  Here are the thread-by-thread "keys" for the two blocks A & B.  She says there are a total of 71 units across the width, or 568 ends total.  The design shown, though is 11 units wide, which does not divide evenly into 71.  Also, if you repeat the whole draft as shown, you'll have two blocks of B in the unbleached linen together, and I have a feeling that is not what she meant.  So some portion(s) of the profile draft must be for the start and/or end of the design, and the rest is the pattern to repeat. 

If I leave one unit of the profile out of the repeat, that makes ten units per repeat.  If I repeat that 7 times, that's 70 units, plus the one to balance at the end makes the 71. So my profile draft for the threading looks like this.  The only difference is the repeat indicator - it changes everything!


So I measured out my bleached and unbleached linen warp according to my plan here.  What do you think?  How would you interpret Barrett's profile draft?