Month: June 2010

While I was up at the cottage last week, I decided to put a little warp on the Gilmore Gem II. Next thing I know, 6 towels were woven off…

Specs:

• Warp: 8/2 unmercerized cotton in natural
• Weft: 8/2 unmercerized cotton in grey, sage and blue (2 towels each)
• Draft: Dissimilar Squares Twill from Handweaving.net (#60967)

Why this pattern? I realized as I sat down to plan my warp that I didn’t have any of my weaving pattern books at the cottage. Handweaving.net to the rescue.* I picked this draft because it is very similar to the one I started to use for this scarf (scarf on the far right). It’s not exactly the same, so there might be another set of sample (towels) coming up. I still want to explore that pattern.

click to enlarge

Here they are again, washed and hemmed.

Loom size: 15.4″ x 25″ (plus hem)
Finished size: 13″ x 23.5″

I’m quite pleased with them. They will go onto the boat as hand towels in the head. The current towels are cream colored terry cloth and have sometimes been confused with my cleaning rags.

These should be distinctive enough that they can’t be confused with the ones that you wipe down the toilet or muddy footprints with! The added bonus is that they can do double duty as dish towels. I will need to make more of these to stock the boat with. I can go through this stack in one cruise out.

click to enlarge

I sewed in a loop of cotton twill tape onto one edge of the towel so that they can be hung onto a hook, if desired. While I was at it, I printed customized labels to iron onto them.

I printed my “labels” onto a sheet of Avery T-Shirt Transfer and cut them down to size.  These were then ironed onto 1/2″ cotton twill tape. I had the transfers leftover from another project. I’m not sure that these will hold up to the rough washing/tumble dry cycles that towels go through, but they are quick to make and I didn’t have to commit to 100 or 1000 labels.

These labels look interesting too. I might give these a try too at some point.

While at the spa on Sunday, the spa/resort bathrooms had a stack of rolled up thick washcloths instead of paper towels. I want to do that for my bathroom at the cottage. A pretty stack of handwoven single use towels for visitors (and a convenient laundry hamper nearby).

* This is a wonderful site with lots of fabulous public domain drafts. Think Project Gutenberg for weaving drafts. You can read it online or pull it into a weaving program capable of reading WIF files and make adjustments. Weavolution has a great article on WIFs.

In my hurry to finish my post and head out for a day of fun, I forgot to include the references for the pleated scarf in the last post.

1. Anne Field‘s Collapse Weave workshop notes.
2. Collapse Weave: Creating Three-Dimensional Cloth, Anne Field. p. 50-55.
3. Handwoven Scarves, Interweave Press. “Pleated Scarf” by Gisela Evitt, p 28-29. (While you are at it, look at the scarf on page 31. It is woven with the same warp, but different weft and a denser sett.)
4. Fabrics That Go Bump: The Best of Weaver’s, Madelyn van der Hoogt. Pleats, Ridges, Furrows, p. 57-82.
5. Handwoven Magazine, November/December 2009. “All you do is spritz!” by Ruby Leslie, p.30-31.

The only place that discusses the effect of ppi vs. epi was in Anne’s workshop. In the series of experiments described in her book (reference #2), you can infer what is necessary to make the pleats. The article in Handwoven Magazine lists the epi and ppi, but does not state the importance of the relationship between the 2 to make the pleating work. Lastly, in Fabrics That Go Bump, the section referenced has a good discussion on the fabric density and yarn sizes.

Have fun!