Universal Yarn Creative Network

A couple of weeks ago, I was so proud of myself for making a sampler and feeling like I had a plan for my Garden 10 towels. I was able to try out some different pick-up patterns and see how the resulting fabric looked on both sides, determining whether or not I thought it would make a good pattern for towels. This experiment led me to choose the pattern for my first towel. But…I’m getting ahead of myself here.

First, did you know Garden 10 comes in cones? I set out to warp up the Cricket using a cone of Garden 10 in white. It was so easy to warp from the cone because it sits upright all on its own without rolling away like a ball of yarn. Plus, the yardage is super awesome, at over 3000 yards.

I decided to plan conservatively for my towels and shoot for 3. After some quick calculations, I warped my loom  the same as the sampler (20 epi using a 10 dent reed/2 epi), but warped it 14″ wide. I began and ended in a slot (an odd number of ends) so my pick-up patterns would be balanced. I decided that the measurement I wanted for the towels (before washing) was 14″ wide x 24″ long, not including hems. The length of my warp was 100″, which included 1 1/2″ at the end of each towel for hems, and an inch between towels.

For the first towel, I picked a simple 3/1 weft float pattern from my sampler. To add a little visual interest, I decided to repeat the 6 row pattern 4 times, and then add a few rows of plain weave in between, and also at the sides. You can see where I did a 1 up, 1 down pattern on most of the pick-up stick, and then did an inch of plain weave pick-up at the edges.

After I did my first repeat (6 rows x 4 + plain weave), I measured this repeat and recorded all of this in my Weaving Journal (!).

After measuring the repeat, I knew I’d need 10 total repeats to achieve my desired length. To keep track, I stuck a straight pin between repeats and made a hatch mark in my journal.

One nice thing about weaving with Garden 10 doubled, is the ability to stagger the woven in ends.

After finishing up border and hem on towel 1, I added 4 rows of plain weave with some scrap yarn and then went right into towel 2. Once I’m done with all 3 towels, I’ll take the whole lot straight over to my sewing machine and secure the ends.

And this is where my attention span wavered from my sampler. Waffle weave is something I’ve had in my head couldn’t really be achieved on a rigid heddle without a lot of trouble. After a quick internet search, I landed upon this great post over at Cotton Cloud’s blog. It’s just a 6 row repeat, so easy to memorize. I seem to have failed to take a photo of this towel in progress on the loom, but here’s a pick-up stick shot!

I didn’t end up being overly impressed with the waffle weave-ness of this pattern, but I still like it for an alternative texture.

Onto towel 3. Once again, my wandering brain decided it was time for a new weaving trick. I flipped to chapter 2, Finger Controlled Weaves in The Weaver’s Idea Book. Danish Medallions caught my eye, so I decided to go for it! First I had to decide how wide I wanted my medallions to be. I decided I wanted to go for a fairly squared shape, so after weaving my plain weave in between the “outline” yarn, I did a little measuring. I could see that by skipping 4 warp threads, I would achieve my desired shape. First I located the very center of my warp, and counted out from there, placing straight pins where I wanted my first row of medallions to be.

All the straight pins were probably overkill – I could have just counted. But I like visual reminders for when my brain goes haywire!

Jane Patrick has a great photoguide for working Danish Medallions. I got the hang of it right away! Like any new technique, it felt tedious in the beginning. But after the first few I found my rhythm and didn’t want to stop. I did 3 repeats of the medallions, making the middle row offset.

Next, I decided it was time for yet another new to me technique, stripes. I’m a sucker for yellow and white stripes – they’re so cheerful! Changing colors every 2 rows was super easy. Every other row, all I had to do was “link” the 2 colors so there wouldn’t be floats at the sides.

For me, it was just like twisting yarns in intarsia knitting. Again, I used straight pins to keep track of the length of my towel. Every 12 stripes, I made a hatch mark in my journal and moved the pin up.

At the other end of my third and final towel, I did another 3 repeats of medallions, added in my 1 1/2″ hem, and 4 rows with waste yarn.

Then the fun part – unrolling all the towels!

 

Now to the finishing. My first step was to secure the ends of each towel. I did this with matching thread and the zigzag stitch on my sewing machine.

I made sure the needle went between the yellow waste yarn so it could easily be cut away.

 

Here they are all cut apart, before hemming.

 

I folded in the edge of each hem by a little less than a third and pressed with my steam iron,

And then up one more time,

And then lots of pins!

I chose to use a narrow zigzag in order to catch the edge of the hem, rather than a straight stitch. If I was really going for fancy, I would have hand stitched each hem.

 

I then washed and dried the towels, warm water, nothing special.

It’s my mom’s birthday this week. These little towels will make a great gift and will work perfectly as hand towels in her newly painted half-bath. There’s nothing like a handmade gift for someone you love, right?

Catch up with me next time on Weaving Wednesday. There will be weaving (duh!), more cotton, and a fun new trick!

 

Our last couple of projects have been completely reliant on colorful yarn and plain weave.  Sometimes there is nothing more beautiful than simplicity. But I get bored and like to learn new tricks. Luckily, the 15″ Cricket is lots of fun and is capable of much more than plain weave. The first thing I did when considering where to begin in this adventure was to purchase a copy of Jane Patrick’s The Weaver’s Idea Book.

I knew I wanted to try some pick-up patterns, and I knew I wanted to make dishtowels with Garden 10, our high quality mercerized Egyptian Giza cotton. The finger controlled lace weaves in Chapter 2 really grabbed my attention, but I knew I needed a more firm fabric since my goal was towels. Chapter 3: Pick-up on the Rigid Heddle Loom was my destination. Over 50 pages of jam-packed information in this chapter, including helpful sidebar tips made me feel like  had a friend by my side the whole time I was weaving. So, Step One: Warp the loom. Instead of flying by the seat of my pants like I did for the last 2 scarves, I decided to consult the handy Master Yarn Chart over at Interweave when deciding what sett to use for my towels. I found what I was looking for on page 1. As I said, I’m using Garden 10 which is a 10-weight crochet thread. The chart told me that for this weight of yarn, the sett ranges were from 16-24 epi. I decided to go with 20 epi by threading a 10-dent reed with 2 ends per dent.

I discovered that by threading through each slot and hole, I saved myself the extra step of having to sley the reed – yay! Step Two: Grab paper and pen and start recording. I’m pretty good at reading my knitting and crochet work, so I don’t always take notes as I’m going. Sometimes I’ll go back after my work and write patterns. But I’m a beginning weaver. And even if I was a pro, there’s no way I or anyone else could remember all the details of a piece of cloth. This is something I should have started from the very beginning:  a weaving journal.

Helpful things to include are yarn specs, sett, number of ends, and weaving width. For this sampler, I also took notes on each pattern I did, colors, and number of reps. When I go to make my dishtowels, if there’s a particular piece of the sampler I want to use as an all-over design, I’ll know just how to recreate it. Step Three: Start weaving! I know I’m going to want to have hemmed edges for my towels, so the header was essential to my sampler. For the beginning header, I wove using a single strand of Garden 10 so my hem wouldn’t be too bulky. After about a 2″ header, I started in by sampling many of the patterns in Chapter 3. Each pattern required the use of a single pick-up stick, included with the Cricket. Using a pick-up stick is super easy!

First, place the heddle in the down position. This raises the warp threads in the slots to the top, and the warp threads in the holes are lowered. You will be working with those slot warps that are on top.

Then, working behind the heddle toward the back of the loom, pick up threads according to the pattern. For the first several patterns in my sampler, I did a simple 1 up, 1 down repeat. What this means, is that with the pick-up stick, you “pick up” or place the next thread on the stick, then place the stick over the next thread, and so on.

Here’s another angle.

And, here we are with the pick-up stick all ready to go. I must say, as a person who is often a poor planner, I’m pretty pleased with my sampler! By going through each of the exercises laid out by Jane, everything started making more sense – the mechanics of how the warp and weft work together and all the possibilities there are! Just like the warp, in order to have a balanced weave, I used doubled-up Garden 10 for the weft also. The aqua and white in the sampler are Garden 10, and the yellow supplemental weft in some of the patterns is Cotton Supreme. The worsted weight soft cotton adds a really nice pop. I may do some of this just on the ends of my towels! After finishing up my sampler, I sewed my hems and threw the whole piece into the washer and dryer.

On the left side of the above picture is the right side of the weaving, the right side of the graphic is the wrong side of the weaving. Again, because I’m making towels, I wanted to be sure that both sides looked good. Although I really love the look of the right side of the top few patterns, I feel like the floats on the back are going to be problematic for towels. About the first two-thirds of the patterns of this sampler (bottom to top) are weft floats, meaning the weft yarn “floats” over the surface. The top third of the patterns are warp floats, meaning it’s the warp yarn that does the floating.  I found it quite intriguing that “warp floats in pairs” looked very similar on the right side as “3/1 and 5/1 floats” looked on the wrong side! Fun! And speaking of weaving with Garden thread, here are a couple of projects by Linda Davis of the Tail Spinner.

First we have an awesome plaid using Garden 10. Linda is also doing 20 epi (same as my sampler), but she’s using two 10-dent heddles in order to keep her ends single.

This next project uses Garden 5, a little heavier weight of our Garden thread. This was woven using a 10 dent heddle with plain-weave in the ends and a pick-up pattern in between. Nice work, Linda!

See ya next time with my finished Garden 10 towels!