Jeweled Towels

Eight-shaft towel with black weft

For me, the jewel tones feel like everything that is right and good in the world. They are easy.

My intention for this club kit was to design something that isn’t (too) difficult to weave, that feels soothing, that can be scaled up without too much extra yarn, and that changes a lot with different weft colors (make sure to check out the iridescence in the pictures with orange and gold wefts). Something that works well for holiday gifting season.

I am smitten with weaving hearts and that’s where I went for the eight-shaft kit. I wish I could replicate the design for the four-shaft and rigid heddle kits, but I have not yet figured out how to do that. Hang around, I am still working on it!

My weaving and my designing are growing along with you. I think of color and structure like lyrics and music. Sometimes the lyrics are written first, sometimes the music. And sometimes they happen together. I tend to start designing with the draft and then add the colors later. For these towels, I designed the draft and the colors together. It is a rosepath design, amped up a bit, with a touch of syncopation.

I’d like to be able to say that these towels flowed from my hands, to the loom, into being. They didn’t. Sometimes things come easily, sometimes they are harder. I tried something new with warping that turned the warp into a mess. I changed the tie-ups several times to try and get it just right, and when I pulled the towels off the loom, I found that a shaft had gotten dropped half-way through weaving so the designs on the later towels are not the same as the earlier towels, and I found a few places where I had skipped threads with my shuttle.

But you can’t see any of that because I arranged the photos to not show the flaws. Sometimes that is just the way it works. When I am feeling a bit more confident, I will take pictures of all of the mistakes and post them. Just in case you also make the occasional mistake and want to know that you are not alone. And next time, I will try to remember to do better and cut the towels from the loom sooner and advance my warp more often.

The rigid-heddle pattern will include information about making these with one heddle, or two for a finer fabric. All patterns will include options for napkins as well as towels.

Part of my intention was giving a little break after all of the stretching we did with the last kit. This is the third of three towel kits in a row…what can I say, I love towels! But just in case you are not planning on spending the rest of your life weaving towels, know that the next kit will be quite different!

I can’t wait to see what you will make with these kits.

Happy Weaving!

Dena