Cotton Towel Finished

Finished - with the traditional glass of wine :-)

I finished off the last 3 inches of the cotton towel (Guild project) this morning and as was the tradition in the US when a project is finished a glass of wine is earned. By the end of the 26" length I was actually moving along quite fast - I had finally memorised the sequence and could stand the odd interruption without loosing my place!

The weaving set-up

This photo shows how I ran my home made temple - wooden ends with nails, a chain to keep the width consistent and two of my large (telephone) glass insulators hung across chairs at the height of the warp to stretch the temple outwards.  It meant that from beginning to end the warp stayed at a consistent 13" width.

One selvedge.

The selvedges worked out pretty well - the use of a floating double thread and the temple and hand placing the weft thread all add up to a nice tidy finish.  Tension made a difference with the slub cotton warp - not enough and the unraised warp threads tended to 'stick' a little more which meant the floating selvedge threads often picked up an extra - I learnt early on to make sure they didn't and keep the wound on tension at a high enough amount to avoid it mostly.  The unwind speed of the warp beam and the wind on speed when the amount of warp on each is different along with the ratchet and pawl size on both means there is always a slight amound of difference I guess.

The finised piece.

Now that it is finished I'll contact the next person on the list and they can come and pick up the loom to do their section.  We should be through the list and ready to cut off the pieces and hem them in another month.  The warp lines (from three threads per dent in the reed) will disappear in the first wash.  Time now to go and pack it up. 

I will certainly be using this design again, but on the jack or counterbalance loom to make it a whole lot faster.