Tag Archives: Handwoven

The Color of Cotton

28 Tuesday Jul 2015

Posted by in Color, Towels

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Twill Towel in Naturally Colored Cotton

Twill Towel in Naturally Colored Cotton

Before my weaving days, my exposure to cotton was limited to one color: white. White t-shirts, white sheets, white hotel towels. What color there was came from dyes. And many times, that color was fugitive—over time, red turned to pink, navy turned to powder blue, and yellow faded to cream.

Then I learned to weave and of course, needed yarn. I love shopping for yarn! There are so many different fibers, different spins, and hues to choose from. And that’s when I discovered that cotton is also available in colors that come from nature!

Kitchen Towel in Naturally Colored Cotton

Kitchen Towel in Naturally Colored Cotton

Cotton has always grown in a variety of browns, tans, greens, and even reds, and many peoples over time have spun and woven beautiful naturally colored textiles. It has a shorter  staple(fiber) length than white cotton and produces a softer cloth than white cotton. And the amazing thing to me is that the color deepens with washing. I wove a series of hand towels several years ago and had a small piece left over which I kept and use as a basket liner. This little towel is still the same soft green and brown as when I wove it.

The white cotton we are familiar with today was bred in response to the Industrial Revolution. The development of inexpensive dyes and improvements in spinning and weaving manufacturing led growers to breed just that one variety. Colored cotton became a novelty until the early 1980’s when a small number of cotton breeders began developing the line again.

Kitchen Towel in Naturally Colored Cotton Twill

Kitchen Towel in Naturally Colored Cotton Twill

Remembering the towels I wove earlier, I decided to weave another run in naturally colored cotton. Cotton is a great fiber for towels, very absorbent, durable and easy to care for. And twill is my go-to weave structure for just about everything. The towels are off the loom now and I’m almost finished hemming. I’m happy with the feel of the towels and the warm colors of the cotton. And I know they won’t fade!

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Giving Thrums a New Life

24 Thursday Apr 2014

Posted by in Overshot, Thrums

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Earlier this year I made a goal, a New Year’s resolution of sorts, to work more from my stash. I’ve made some towels with a rick-rack cotton yarn, followed by some placemats in a heavy cotton woven in block weave. There is still my thrum basket.

Thrums are the short pieces of yarn left at the end of the warp. They are too short to weave anything useful, but I ache at just throwing them away. Each warp takes a lot of planning and throwing away 300-400 pieces each 20” to 24” inches long is against my nature. But what can I do with them (other than bundling them up and putting them in a basket for some future project?)

For ideas, I pulled up my Handwoven Magazine indexes and looked up “thrums”. (Yes, I do keep my back issues—they inspire and entertain, even if they are 20 or 25 years old!) In the September/October, 1991 issue, Margaret Gaynes presented an overshot potholder design. She used her thrums as the pattern weft and bordered the potholder with bias tape to cover the cut ends on each side. There was the beginning for my project.

Instead of potholder, I chose to make mug rugs– those fabric coasters for your coffee mugs and water bottles. I like the idea of using an overshot design and chose a pattern with one large motif for each piece. Mug rugs are often fringed on the cut ends, but I needed to do something with the sides where my short thrums will hang off. The answer here is to apply a side fringe as well. This is accomplished by threading a dummy warp for the width of that side fringe. Then when the project is off the loom and machine-stitched around each mug rug, that warp is removed and the fringe remains.  Of course, I’m back to wasting yarn.

Mug Rugs from Thrums

Mug Rugs from Thrums

I’m still sampling to get the perfect size. The first mug rug had fringes that were too short (top). The second one, on the left, seemed too big to me (6-1/2” square with fringe). The third one, on the right, is sett closer, so it is 6-1/2” x 7” with fringe; still too big. Next I will use a finer ground weft to see if I can get down to a 5-1/2” square mug rug. I’m getting there.

Do you have ideas for using thrums? Let me know!

The Draft That Didn’t

20 Thursday Mar 2014

Posted by in Napkins, Placemats, Uncategorized

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Color Block Placemats off the loom

A funny thing happened with those napkins on my “To Weave” list. I started out with one plan and ended up with another. But let me go back a bit.

A couple months ago, I began purposely planning projects to use up some old yarn. I have some heavy cotton blend yarn in spring-like colors that were ripe for the weaving during those cold, snowy days. For the first project, I chose the medium orange (think tangerine), a perky red (strawberry–I see a theme here), and peach. The colors really do work together! They became color block placemats with an off-white cotton ground thread as the tie-down.

Color Block Block Placemats

Color Block Placemats off the loom

As I weave placemats, I think about the napkins that should go with them.  Not everyone uses napkins (my husband never seems to need one) but many of us need protection from our food.  I’m speaking from personal experience here.  And I like my napkins to at least pretend to go with my placemats.  So when these placemats came off the loom, it was time to tackle the napkins.

I don’t have light weight cottons in colors to match the placemats perfectly, but I have plenty of off-white on hand.  To add a little sparkle, I alternated mercerized and unmercerized across the warp.  But I needed a weave structure that would play well with the bold blocks of the placemats.  I turned to A Weaver’s Book of 8-Shaft Patterns edited by Carol Strickler (1991 Interweave Press). In the chapter on twill blocks, there’s a nice twill and basketweave combination that looked like it would work, but after threading the loom and weaving for several inches, I wasn’t so sure.  I checked my tie-up, my threading, and my treadling for errors, unwove and rewove, but it still didn’t match my mind’s picture for my napkins.  So I took a walk to consider what to do with 8.5 yards of off-white warp threaded for block twill.

The obvious choice was to just treadle those twill blocks as they were threaded. Because I was using a 3/1 and 1/3 twill, the way the light hits the two blocks makes them look distinctively different, matt versus shine.  The 10/2 cotton gives a nice hand to the cloth and with washing, will soften even more.

Twill block napkins

Twill block napkins on the loom

I’m looking forward to seeing how they turn out after they are finished.

The Pause Between the Warps

12 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by in Uncategorized, Weaving Inspiration

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It’s happened again: I finished up the warps on both my looms at the same time. There’s a great sense of accomplishment when I unwind the newly woven cloth. What started out as cones of yarn is now a web of cloth, just about ready to use (after preshrinking, hemming, and ironing). While I’m finishing the fabric, I’m thinking about what’s next?

I’m a firm believer in lists and like a lot of weavers, have a “What to Weave Next” list. The list is constantly evolving.  What do I get excited about? What challenges me? What is an easy project to do after finishing those challenging ones? What have I been curious about, but never tried? What have I been putting off and should finally learn?

The “To Weave” list also includes what people have asked me about.  Sometimes someone will say “What I’ve really been looking for is…” On to the list it goes! What seems to be popping up in all the ads? What color is promoted at the home stores?

Often I’ll get side-tracked and will go off on a weaving tangent not on my list. That’s okay; that’s what creativity is all about. The tangent should lead to more ideas.

So what is on my list? Since I just finished color block placemats in tangerine, melon and strawberry, I’ll be weaving napkins to go with them.  The formal tablecloths from the big loom will probably get napkins as well, something more refined in finer thread.  The towel stash needs to be replenished for the spring and summer.  And the 2014 Color of the Year is Radiant Orchid (see http://www.Pantone.com) — guess what color will be showing up in the new warps?

What inspires you? What spurs you on to the next project? How do you decide what’s next? What’s on your list?

 

The Results are In!

17 Monday Feb 2014

Posted by in Doubleweave, Uncategorized

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ImageThe Finnweave and doubleweave samples are finished and I learned a lot. It’s fun to try a new technique, all the while thinking about how I will use it in future projects. The Finnweave sample is on the left above. The sample on the right is doubleweave.

As a comparison, the Finnweave is threaded two by two: two threads of background, two threads of pattern, etc. Doubleweave is threaded one by one: one thread background, one thread pattern and so on. When weaving Finnweave, you pick up your design and throw the shuttle twice before you have to pick up the next row. In doubleweave, you have to pick up each row. That is the main reason Finnweave is considered faster to weave than doubleweave. Also in Finnweave, the diagonal lines are smoother than in the doubleweave. That may make a difference if you want to weave something with lots of diagonals. And while Finnweave is technically not reversible, the back side is still pleasing and usable. Doubleweave is completely reversible.

It took me a couple tries to figure out the Finnweave process. The green was my background color, pink the pattern color. So with every throw of the shuttle, I had to think about whether I needed the pattern to be horizontal (like the “stitching” along the bottom and top) or vertical (like the “stitching” along the sides). The pattern color is picked up on different rows depending on how it should look in the design. This slowed me down quite a bit and I had to unweave several mistakes.

The doubleweave sample went much faster. Perhaps it was because I’ve woven loom-controlled doubleweave, where the layers are interchanged with the treadles rather than picked up manually. Perhaps it was because I didn’t have to think about the horizontal or vertical pitch of the pattern thread. Whatever the reason, I enjoyed the weaving and went on to weave two other small samples of old graphed designs.

Now it is time to move on to other warps. But it will be interesting to plan how Finnweave and doubleweave will show up in projects to come.

When is a Towel Not a Towel?

11 Wednesday Dec 2013

Posted by in Towels, Uncategorized

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There is a familiar line we hear when talking to others about handwoven towels: “Oh it’s too pretty to use for dishes!” We laugh, but if you have to do dishes, why not do them with something pretty? Handwoven towels are absorbent, they are soft, they feel special, and are a pleasure to work with. But when is a towel not a towel? What are some of the other uses for a “towel”?

I have a collection of towels woven by friends of mine. They grace my coffee table. They cover my end tables. They accent the center piece for festive dinners. They line bread baskets. They make great hostess gifts. A friend wove one in a pattern from an early American weaving manuscript but with rich hues of plum, ruby, blue, burgundy, and gold. Another in my collection blends pastel colors of cotton and linen. There is the terra cotta towel with a natural accent border. And just recently, I purchased a delightful towel with dragonflies floating across the surface.

We like to weave towels. They are short projects and you don’t have to match one to another like placemats or napkins. You can warp a loom for 10 towels and weave a different pattern and color for each. And when we get tired of a draft, we can just thread a different one next time.

So next time you see a handwoven towel, remember all the places you can use it. And remember–they do dry dishes!