Log Cabin Blankets, Progress Report

I have been slacking off on these log cabin blankets, but the last couple of weekends, I got a bit done. I was having selvage problems, as I may have mentioned. I got advice from the Weaving group on Ravelry. It turns out the trick is, when weaving with 2 shuttles: whenever you have 2 shuttles on one side at the same time, place the second shuttle to arrive on that side BEHIND the first one. That will cause the weft threads to twist around each other at the selvage, so that you will not have any uncaught warp threads. Here is a photo of the selvage to show you what I mean. Log Cabin is a bit more difficult than the waffle weave, I think. I can't "space out" or I will forget the shuttle order. To me, a lot of the fun of weaving is getting into a rhythm and being able to go into a beta state. But, maybe once I have been doing this for awhile, it will get easier. I still need a lot of practice to consider myself an experienced weaver. I probably should weave a little every day, not just on weekends.

Dye workshop at Portland Fiber Studio

It was really fun. I am posting photos now, may add more comments later.

Dye Workshop, Portland Fiber Gallery

Kitchen Towels 2, continued

They are all done, except for hemming!

Green and White Throw

This was my second blanket, in plain weave (shown here with Nacho, the official blanket inspector). Having learned the color lesson where the green looked too dark when woven in free form plaid with white and pink, I tried using green only in the warp, and green and white stripes in the weft, which I think looks much better. Hard to believe it is the same forest green I used in the pink/white/green blanket (see photo below). Also, I tried washing this on delicate, to full it a bit more, thinking it might be warmer without the "holes" between threads of the first blanket. Both are woven at 10 ends per inch (epi). Surprisingly, the green blanket is NOT warmer than the pink one, and I like the texture of the "unwashed" one better. My weaving teacher says the holes hold air, which is insulating. These relatively thin blankets are surprisingly warm. Makes you realize how cheap and crappy store-bought acrylic blankets really are. I don't think I will full blankets in the future. They look better in their original state, I will just soak them in hot water to wash, then spin water out and air dry.

Kitchen Towels 2

Finally finished warping my loom for a new set of kitchen towels, in the "Martini" color scheme. Warping took a long time, and I have been knitting more lately, so I didn't do much weaving this summer. I found out the problem with the plain weave ends of the towels, which I mentioned in my last post. Some threads were not getting caught and I couldn't understand why. I even diagrammed the weave structure on graph paper to see if it was really plain weave, and it was, so I was stymied. It wasn't until I started weaving this next set and could see which threads weren't getting caught.

Want to know what it was? You won't believe it. IT WAS A TIE-UP ERROR!!! I couldn't believe it myself, but I had tied the 1&4 treadle to 1&3. I must have been in such a rush to tie the pedals up to make the wedding gift, and there are 6 different pedal configurations for this weave. Wow. I was glad to fix that one. Now my plain weave ends will be nice & easy to hem. Whew!

Waffle Weave Kitchen Towels 1

As a wedding gift for a friend, I made these waffle weave dishtowels from a kit I purchased at Halcyon Yarn in Bath, ME. I chose the "Country Classic" color scheme. It included the pattern and 4 colors of cotton yarn.

In retrospect, I should have done the tea towel kit, but I don't know what people use tea towels for, and I thought these dish towels would be more useful and a quicker project, because they are smaller. Well, they may be more useful, but quicker? No.

I had never done waffle weave before, so I didn't know how much time it would take to actually warp the loom. It is not so bad once you get going, but the warping is really the hard part of the weaving, as it is not 1234, as in plain weave. Also, it was 20 ends per inch (epi), not 10 as I had been used to weaving, so even if it is not very wide, it is still a lot of threads! I managed to get through it with very few threading errors, which is good because I was running out of time. I ended up hemming them the day before the wedding!

I'm glad I did it, though, as it was a fun project, and I will definitely make some more of these. It really is a good beginner project, once you have done some things in plain weave. Another thing I liked was that you warp the loom with stripes using all 4 colors, then weave one of each towel using only one color in the weft. That way, you get 3 very different-looking towels on the same warp, with a common theme.

The weave structure is very nice. The non-mercerized cotton makes them absorbent.

I will definitely do more of this in the future, now that I have the general idea. Also, weaving with cotton, and a finer thread than I am used to (sport weight) was quite enjoyable.

One caveat...the pattern says to weave an inch or so of "plain weave" at the end of each towel for the hem. I wove what I thought was plain weave (treadling 1&3, 2&4), and looked like plain weave from above, but underneath there were threads that were not caught. It made it much more difficult to hem, as I had to catch up all these loose threads in the hem & tuck them in. I will have to figure out some way around this for next time. I'm pretty sure it was a treadling error, and if I diagram it out, I can find a way to fix this.

How I got started weaving

I bought a used floor loom from a friend of mine. I have some experience knitting and spinning, and had thought about weaving, but I need another hobby like a hole in the head, right? Well, I did it anyway. The loom came with a bench, some heddles, and the book Learning To Weave by Debbie Redding. I tried reading the book to get started on my own, but it was too daunting. I finally took a class at my local fiber studio, which was what really got me started. In addition to learning to warp the loom, I had to buy a warping board, bobbin winder, a shuttle and some bobbins, AND put the loom back together, because it was too big to fit in the door, and we had to take it apart to get it inside. So, there were a lot of obstacles. But, it was worth it. I have since woven two small blankets on the loom. The first one was pink and white and green, and it is very warm. I used sport-weight Bartlett Yarns from Maine which I ordered through Halcyon Yarn. The green combined well with the white and pink OFF the loom, but in weaving, it looks very dark, almost black, so I got my first lesson in combining colors. They don't always look the same "when warp meets weft" as they say.