2015 Christmas Towels half way

Progress on the Christmas towels has been great.  I decided to weave these in two batches to make the warp easier to wind.  Turned out well and today I cut the first 10 off BigMac.

The red and green I dyed this year was slightly different to last year.  Forest Green vice Kelly Green seems a lot more 'Christmasy'.  The design this year has solid stripes rather than the red/green mix I did last year which wove a lot faster.

Enough dyed yarn for warp and weft stripes.

The warp winding for 10 towels took a while and is close to the maximum for my warping board (about another 3 yards would see it full).  Anything more will need a warping mill or use the sectional beam on the loom as designed.  I do have a Leclerc Tension box that will work on BigMac but would need to build a bobbin rack.  Perhaps before next year.

Warp wound and tied off.

Dressing the loom also went smoothly.  I had assembled (but not glued and sanded) my new angel wings for BigMac and with Anne helping by supplying the necessary tension and de-snagging the wind on was simple. I may use slightly thinner dowel next time, this was all that I could get at the time.  It works fine, but thinner dowels would mean being able to see the 'next' warp thread from my normal position sitting directly in front of the heddles.  Threading the heddles went without error and only one snag on the reed where I forgot to skip a dent.  I un-did it back to the error and re-sleyed it!

Angel wings in operation.

Weaving turned out to be fairly fast.  45 - 50 minutes per towel.  The first day I did 1, then the next two days 2, then yesterday 5 to get them finished.  The repeating pattern for the huck lace design was simple to remember luckily, and I don't recall having to 'un-weave' even once.  I didn't have a temple large enough for these towels - I'll have to get one some time - but the thick cotton under tension seemed to hold the selvedge fairly well once it had drawn in a bit.

First few pattern repeats.

This morning I cut off the cloth and zig-zag stitched the ends then trimmed the odd end before throwing the whole lot in the wash.

Stack of 10 towels ready for end stitching.

The wet finishing has improved the feel immensely and closed up the structure nicely.  The pattern has pulled in the edges a little but nothing to really notice and I'm sure that will settle a bit more - it did a little after a quick press.  I now have to cut each one then fold and hem the ends - machine stitched for speed.

Then on to batch number 2.