Fall Color Cotton Dish Towels

With the Townsend Blue Ribbon Country Fair coming up at the end of the month I had picked up the Harrisville Design loom and brought it home ready to put some cotton towels on it to weave while demonstrating. This will be my third Country Fair and this time I will do the same as for the Fiber Arts Festival - put a long warp on the loom and weave before, during, and after the event - eventually ending up with a set of towels to put up for sale.

Given the time of year I decided to do a 'Fall Colors' towel and was able to pick up some reasonable dyed cotton at a good price from R&M Yarns in Georgetown.

Half the warp wound on.

10 towels is about as long as I would ever like to do on the warping board (which would probably hold enough for another 3 or 4 towels).  The HD loom doesn't have a sectional beam as do two of my looms.  Beaming directly from bobbins is the way to go for larger runs.

All the warp, chained and ready to dress the loom

Ready to wind on and potential for tangles all the way.

The long warp chains can be a problem, but I was able to keep it under tension as I wound on and only had one snag that led to a broken warp thread.  I caught it in time and was able to tie it up and resume winding. 

Threading the heddles and sleying the reed took a whole day as there are 480 ends.  I also had to supplement the heddles as the HD didn't have enough. Luckily I have the same size inserted eye heddles on one of my looms.  The reed is a 14 dent and it is sleyed at 2 per dent to make 28 epi - right at the top of the range for this 2 x 2 twill design.

First towel underway.

 The weaving is pretty fast as it is all going to be plain white weft - no changing colors for stripes.  The first couple of towels are in a M&W diamond twill design with a 24 thread repeat.  I've designed the next two with a slightly longer repeat that produces a more curved design.  I'll change after every two.

Close up of the diamond pattern

The weather at the moment is great so there won't be too much weaving going on while I'm outside working, but there's always early morning and evening to get some more done.