Napkin Exchange

The Western North Carolina Handweavers/Fiber Guild is hosting a napkin exchange.  There are three groups of eight weavers participating, with our finished napkins completed by November.  Each weaver selects a draft or pattern and a color for their napkins and then distributes 325 yds of yarn for weft to the other seven members in the group.  I have picked a medium blue with a little turquoise in it called Mediterranean Blue.

All of us will warp our loom with natural 8/2 cotton and thread it based on the pattern we have selected. I will weave up the yarn from each of my group members and return to them finished napkins.  At the end of the exchange in November, I will have eight napkins woven in Mediterranean Blue and natural, in eight different patterns. The napkins should be about 18" square when finished, so they need to be 20" wide on the loom with a woven length of 22" to allow for hemming.

The first challenge was measuring out eight packets of yarn, 325 yards long into a ball.  I don't have a ball winder so I borrowed one from my knitting friend Liz.  I also don't have a yardage counter, so I needed to improvise.  We have a very old skein winder that has been in Gary's family for generations.  I counted out the needed revolutions for each ball on the skein winder and then wound it into individual balls on the ball winder.

The next challenge was selecting a draft that would be interesting yet relatively easy to follow the treadling sequence.  Making eight napkins requires 7 yards of finished cloth.  I had enough warp on the loom when I finished the 7 napkins for the other members of my group to make three napkins for myself in 3 different patterns on the same threading.

Date Finished  Septermber 2014

Loom  Baby Wolf

Weave Structure  twill

Reed   12, 23 epi

Warp     Fiber   cotton

              Count  8/2

              Color  natural

              Mfr  Valley

              Source   WEBS

Warp     Width in Reed  20 inch

              Ends  460

              Length  7 yds

Weft      Fiber  cotton

              Count  8/2

              Color  Mediterranean Blue

              Mfr  Valley

              Source  WEBS

Beat                       50/50                     

Size

More Twill Towels

This summer I made a run of towels on a 7 yard warp in a straight twill.  I loved the opportunity to try out 7 different tie-ups and treadling.  Using a white warp and different colors of weft and different treadling resulted in very different towels.  I blogged about those towels here in an earlier post.

Fancy Twill
Handweaving.net
Draft 13916

I decided that I wanted to try the same thing with a point twill.  The patterns included some that I found on pinterest, handweaving.net and A Weaver's Book of 8-Shaft Patterns. The warp is an 8/4 matt cotton available from Earth Guild.  It is a very soft, not highly twisted cotton, that results in a very lush fabric that I hope is absorbent for towels.  However, set at 20 epi, some of the floats were pretty long on the cloth.  A couple of the tie-ups had floats that were 5 pics long. Hopefully, the stickiness of the yarn will keep the warp from snagging.

One of my favorites in this set uses several different weft colors in random patterns and stripes.  It reminds me of a Fair Isle sweater.  The weft for this towel was frogged from thrift store sweaters.

                                             Fancy Twill
A Weaver's Book of 8-Shaft Patterns
Draft 323-2

Snowflake

Twill Thrills

Page 7

Snowflake Twill Thrills
Page 7

Loom  Baby Wolf

Weave Structure  Point Twill

Reed  12, 20 epi

Warp     Fiber  Matt Cotton

              Count  8/4

              Color  Natural

              Source  Earthguild

Warp     Width in Reed  20 "

              Ends  402

              Length  7 yds

Weft      5/2 and 8/2 cottons and some frogged cottons

Handweaving.net

Draft 61537
Date Finished  December 2013

Beat       50/50  
Size  17 1/2 x 24 1/2

Ms and Ws

It is pretty apparent why this weave structure, a point twill, is called Ms and Ws from this scarf, but not so apparent from the scarf below.  I wanted to warp the loom once and weave two scarves that were very different in appearance, the purple scarf is much more formal than the red scarf.  The draft is from A Weaver's Book of 8-Shaft Patterns, from the Editors of Handwoven.

Date Finished

Date Finished  November 2012
Loom  Baby Wolf

Weave Structure  Ms and Ws

Reed  10 20 epi 

Warp     Fiber   rayon

              Count  8/2

              Color  black

              Mfr  Dragon Tail

              Source  Earth Guild

Warp     Width in Reed 6 inches

              Ends  129

              Length  5 yds - 2 scarves

Scarf One Weft      Fiber  Rayon

              Count  8/2
              Color  variegated red

              Mfr  Dragon Tail

              Source  Earth Guild

              Beat                       50/50                     

Scarf Two Weft      Fiber  Tencel

              Count  8/2

              Color  Eggplant

              Mfr

              Source  Cotton Clouds

              Beat                       50/50