Christmas Towels

Another rather long hiatus in blog entries, I'm afraid.  The good news however, is that there is great progress on the studio build.  The second slab was poured and finished last week so the building there can commence (as soon as the rain stops:  while we are not suffering nearly as much as those to the north of us, we are currently already up 7.5 inches of rain for the year and have 5 days of rain due this week!!).

Anyway, this Christmas, like previous, I made Christmas dish towels for all the family which now includes siblings and their kids, plus a growing list of friends who have ended up on 'the list.'  It meant this year I had to weave 27 for presents, so I increased the yardage a little and completed 35.  Needless to say I used the section beam to warp direct (as last year).  My original plan for the 2018 design was a Fibonacci sequence in green and red across the whole width and white weft with a plain twill weave structure.  As my sectional beam has 2 inch sections the original idea had to be re-thought to allow me to use the 48 spools in my rack to fill the 2 inch sections so the compromise was a smaller section of the Fibonacci sequence which lasted 48 threads. I filled every other section, reversed the rack (flipping the order) and then filled in the gaps.  Overall this gave a repeat pattern at 96 threads.

Winding the spools went smoothly and winding onto the back beam through the Leclerc Tension Box (with an added counter) was fast.  Dressing the rest of the loom took a couple of days but with a simple twill weave it wasn't too hard.

Using the large boat shuttle and not having to change for stripes (as I had done in the previous 4 years) meant fairly quick weaving.  I wove the first 7 towels then cut them off.  They were the ones I had to package and send to NZ.  They made it in plenty of time.  The rest were in one single length - zig zag stitched at either end and wet finished before ironing, cutting and machine hemming.

The towels were then packed up with about 6 being mailed to various family spread around the U.S and all the rest hand delivered as we had a family Christmas gathering this year in Knoxville so most could be given out personally.

I already have ideas for the 2019 Christmas towel and rather like the idea of not having to change weft colors (stripes) as much.  I have used huck lace in the past and just might use that again in the next design, although one never knows.  The good thing will be that the looms will all be set up in the new studio well before I have to start, so it won't involve moving a loom into our spare room to complete the project.