Another Year of Pandemic Towels

 20211 has been another year of spending time at the loom.  I've been doing some different things with the towels I've woven as well as visiting tried and true approaches.  I was motivated more by weaving challenges and classes this year.  

A lot of people have been weaving Susan Poague's Turned Taquete' circles.  I finally succumbed to this structure, which can be a lot of fun, because of a group challenge to weave something using the 2021 Pantone Colors of the Year.  This design was adapted from her article in Handwoven Magazine, May/June 2019, pg 46.  It was woven on 8 shafts with 10/2 cotton for the warp and weft.

Turned Taquete' Drawdown

Turned Taquete' Towel

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Another challenge this group suggested was to weave something in linen.  When I think about linen, I normally think about towels.  I also think about lace structures.  These were woven using 16/2 linen for both warp and weft for all but one of the towels.  For the first one, I decided to use 10/2 cotton just to make sure things were working well.  

Linen Towels

Linen Towels Drawdown

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Another group I belong to decided to use US National Park posters as color inspiration for woven pieces.  I picked the US Virgin Islands as my inspiration.  These towels were woven with 10/2 cotton for the warp and weft in six different colors.  The structure is a fancy point twill, treadled in a couple different ways, for each towel.

US Virgin Islands Poster

   

Virgin Islands Towels

Virgin Islands Towels Drawdown

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I next took a break from challenges and did a bit of free-hand colors.  I have most of my 10/2 cotton yarns sitting on top of a bureau and while I was weaving over the course of a week or so, was looking at one corner of the colors.  They were all kind of neon and pastel.  The colors reminded me of the textiles from the 60's.  So I used those colors for the next group of towels.  The towels were threaded to an extended point twill and woven with various treadlings on 8 shafts using 10/2 cotton.

60's Towels Colors

60's Towels

60 Towels Drawdown

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Recently, I became interested in a weave-along with Tien Chiu and Michele Belson dealing with gradient colors in weaving.  The weave-along was intended for napkins, but I couldn't resist weaving towels instead.  These had a red and yellow 10/2 cotton warp in a series of curved gradients.  I used a number of different colored 10/2 cotton for weft, including yellow, very light pink, magenta and fuchsia.  The structure is straight twill on 8 shafts woven with a 2-2-1-1-1-1 tie-up.  

Gradient Towels

Gradient Towels Drawdown

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A couple of towels from the "vault".

Lupine Towel

Russian Cloth Towel

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I have found over the years that there was warp left over from a towel run - not enough for a towel but too much to just throw away.  I hemmed a bunch of these and they are bread cloth size.

Towels are a great way to play with color.  I'm sure there will be more next year.

COVID Weaving

The one thing the COVID-19 pandemic has given me is time to weave. It’s amazing how much extra time one gets when all your meetings are just “down the hall” rather than a car ride away. We are all tired of the images of that virus appearing everywhere, but in 2020 it held a bit of fascination from a design perspective. 

 In the past several years, I have been studying how to use ProWeave software to create weaving designs. Last year, I also was interested to see if I could create a pictural representation of that COVID-19 graphic that had been holding our attention. Using ProWeave, I graphed a picture of the molecule. From that depiction, I was able to “superimpose” weave structures on the positive and negative faces. My “go-to” is a 1/3 and 3/1 straight twill.  These designs were created for 24 shafts.

COVID-19 Graphic

1/3 3/1 Straight Twill Draft

I also designed drafts for 1/3 3/1 broken twill.

1/3 3/1 Broken Twill Draft

The straight twill was too elongated but the broken twill was getting closer to what I had in mind.  

1/3 3/1 Broken Twill Sample

I then tried an 8-end satin structure.  ( Note:  The draft shows the underside as I wove the samples.)

Front and Back Sides of Satin Sample                          

8-End Satin COVID-19 Draft

 

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Although this structure worked to get the visual effect I was hoping for, there are 7 end floats.  But I wove samples for a sample exchange and one towel. I hadn't woven satin before and I realized that the sett wasn't quite right, but this towel, woven with 10/2 perle cotton is soft and a bit luxurious.

 
COVID Towel

 

I'm not sure if I will spend any more time with this design, but the technique is an interesting one to achieve images in my weaving.

Pandemic Towels

Having been in lockdown for eight months, I thought I would review what I've been weaving during the time of COVID-19.  I have a few towels that were woven before March 2020, but most of these were made since then.

All of the towels were woven using 10/2 mercerized cotton in both the warp and weft, sett at 30 epi.  Each set of towels were woven as some sort of point twill - most of them were different - on eight shafts.  The tie-up for all was a 2-2-1-1-1-1 twill.  

I am still using pictures as color inspiration and creating random stripes as the color design.  An online random stripe generator is very useful when designing the stripes, although I do tweak the color order and stripe size a bit.  I work toward proportion of values across each warp that emphasize the medium value colors and use less of the high intensity and dark value colors.

The latest towels off the loom, I called Lupine towels - inspired by a picture of a mountainscape with flowers.   

Colors for Lupine towels

Lupine Towels edge

Lupine Towels

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The Golden Gate towels were inspired by a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge over the Bay.  

Golden Gate Towel Inspiration and Yarn

Golden Gate Towels

Golden Gate Towels - edge

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The Beach Towels resulted from work I did to put together a presentation to my local fiber guild.  I talked a bit about my process for designing these striped colored towels.  To give an illustration, I chose this picture of Honolulu.  I liked the colors so much that I wove towels using the color choices.

Beach Towel Inspiration and Yarns

Beach Towels

Beach Towels - Edge

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The Mountain Meadow Towels were an attempt to use more green - not my favorite color.  It wasn't a lot of green , but more than I normally use.

Mountain Meadow Color Inspiration and Yarn

Mountain Meadow Towels

Mountain Meadow Towels - Edge

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I have a few random towels left over from various warps.  The Candy Box towel was design with the same striping as the others above.  The inspiration was a box rather than a picture.  The Turned Taquete was the result of a group study of the weave structure.  

Candy Box Towel Inspiration

Candy Box Towel

Turned Taquete

I have always loved natural bleached cotton yarn as a basis for towels.  The Russian Cloth Towels are woven on 4-shafts using a fancy 2/2 twill pattern.

Russian Cloth

Although the pandemic has been catastrophic for so many people, it has given me a chance to weave more than usual.

Towels are Still Being Woven

I realized that it has been quite a while since I posted on this blog.  I have been weaving, but since what I'm weaving is similar, I haven't thought there was much to say.  But I am still weaving towels.  A friend ask me if I wasn't tired of towels yet, and I guess I'm not.

Since the last published towels, I have woven several sets of towels, still exploring color as I go along.  I took a short break from color to weave some 4-shaft twill towels using 12/2 unmercerized cotton in a natural color.  The pattern is a fancy twill and the resulting towels are soft and subtle.  I also wove a few of these with 10/2 cotton.

All of the other towels have been various combinations of colors.  They are all woven using 10/2 mercerized cotton in warp and weft, sett at 30 epi.  They are threaded to a variety of 8-shaft point twills and the tie-up is a 2-2-1-1-1-1 twill.

It is fun to combine different colors for these towels.  I typically use a picture as inspiration, but not always.

The next set of towels on the loom are in shades of blue.

Mother Nature Towels

I'm still weaving towels, but just not as much recently.  I got inspired by this magazine ad in colors that are definitely not my colors.  Working with colors that I don't particularly appeal to me is a good challenge.

Color Inspiration

I played around with what colors to use and decided on six.  I didn't have just the right orange, so I decided on a red and a couple of olivey greens to go with the navy and melon.  

Yarn Colors

This is 10/2 mercerized cotton, sett at 30 epi.  These were threaded as an 8-shaft variable point and treadled with a 2-2-1-1-1-1 twill tie-up.  

Full Drawdown

Drawdown Detail

I wove ten towels with weft colors that were the same as the warp colors.  The treadling was mostly an 8-point twill but I used other variations of point twills.

Finished Towels

Details with Yellow Weft

Because I named these Mother Nature Towels, to match the ad information, I kept hearing the Beatle's song, "Mother Nature's Son" so I'll leave you a link so that you can hear it too... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZJMaRMbRro