December's TotM

Merry Christmas!

December's towel in 22/2 cottolin ground with cotton floss pattern weft in miniature overshot.

Forming letters with sprang

I worked some simple doubleweave pickup.  And you can see I've left some of the warp in the center section unwoven, sitting on top of the cloth.

Then I worked a sprang braid using the unwoven warp.

It's supposed to look like two Ds (my initials).  I don't think I like the shape of the inner curve - the part I did with the pickup.  I think it should start further out from the vertical, and end more gradually, not so pointy.

I think I put enough warp on to try again.  What do you think?

UFOs

You know those UFOs (UnFinished Objects) that sit around for months or years?  I'm sure you have them.  This is one of those.  What is it, you ask?

Since the weather (finally) has cooled off a bit around here, I was thinking my teapot needs a jacket or "cozy".  I had started one from a project in a book some number of years ago, so I dug it out of the basket on the top of the bookcase where it had been collecting dust.

 It's pretty funky-looking.  It's knitted of wool in "short rows" for shaping, and then wet-felted.

It's too big for my teapot so I rolled up the hem.  I decided I really didn't care for the colors.  Too cold-looking for something that should be cozy.

So I overdyed it in golden yellow...

... yeah!  That's more like it.

After dyeing, I felted it a bit more and it fits the circumference of the teapot better, but it's still too tall.  I left the cuff edge out so it would show the unevenness of the edge of the felted fabric.

I'm a Cover Girl...

...or, well, at least my towels are.  There on the cover, I mean.  That's pretty darn exciting.  These Atwater-Bronson towels in cottolin are a project in this issue of Handwoven magazine, available from Interweave Press.

Also don't miss article contributions from friends: Trudy S. and regular contributor Susan H., and editing of this issue by Sarah J.

Final TotM for the year! December miniature overshot

This month's structure is the same as the one used way back in March, but the yarns are different.  The warp and ground weft are 22/2 cottolin, in bright red for Christmas.  For pattern weft, I used cotton embroidery floss (all 6 strands) in white and green.

The center design is formed by a 41-thread repeat in the threading, repeated 9 times, with a 10-end border on each side, for a total of 389 ends.  The sett in the reed for this towel is coarser than all the other towels this year, at 20 epi.  So the width in the reed is just under 19.5".

Below is the draft for this towel.  To understand where to place the borders, you'll need a picture I think, so I've put the fuzzy image from the original article above.  Sorry about the quality, but I think it gives an idea of what you're doing when you weave this.  Weave plain weave with the red 22/2 cottolin, then put a green border using tabby between each pattern pick, then some plain weave, then the wide border using white pattern weft (again using tabby), then more plain weave followed by a second green border.