MacLaren Tartan : a multi country experience 🇨🇦 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 🇺🇸

 I just discovered today that I have yet to post about a finished weaving project. Clean forgot all about it with all our summer activities! 

Every so often I get the urge to weave a tartan and go cruising at Handweaving.net for inspiration, along with a list of available colours in my stash. This time I was wanting to use some of my 10/2 cottons.  A tartan with not too many colour changes .... and this time I chose Maclaren.   Now the draft below is much brighter than the authentic tartan would be.  Also brighter than my actual cottons but I just quickly went for 'close enough' colours for the draft.     I also spread the draft over 8 shafts from 4 so I would have enough heddles per shaft.   Moving heddles on a Megado is a real bear!

My sett was 28 epi and I used a 14 dent reed.    The colours used were all Valley cotton:

• nautical blue
• porcelain green
• autumn blonde
• red
• black 

I put on 8 yards and got 7 generously large towels.  Rather than weave each towel separately, I wove continuously for the full length and would cut apart later.   I felt it gave me less to consider other than to keep weaving and not worry about where an ending could be. 

Here's the warp being beamed and it was  bright and cheery!  I found that the warp used most of my stash of the blue and green. I got another nautical blue from Webs but they were out of the green.   I put out a call on Ravelry's Warped Weavers Marketplace and had  Nancy from New Hampshire come to the rescue with a cone of porcelain green.   It would work nicely as the warp was all from one cone and the weft would be from another.  They would blend together just fine.   *phew*    Same thing for the blue cotton.

Here's a picture of the weaving underway. I was able to carry some colours up the side, by wrapping when switching shuttles, and some I had to cut off and change.    There was very precise number of pics so I was counting constantly.  No doubt about it, it a slow weave..... but once you get into the rhythm of it, it moves along. Not having a boundary set of a certain number of inches for a towel length meant you didn't need to keep track of that..... just keep on working to the next colour.    I just kept going until I saw the rod at the back of the loom come over the back beam.

Here's the freshly cut off the loom warp all laid out.... all 8 yards. There was very little yard waste.

And a closer view. Not that its relaxed, the squares all look square!

I found that 37  or 38 inches (can't recall which right now) occurred at a regular spot in the pattern, so serging apart was straightforward.   No big table for me but a cluttered desk will do.  It works and I just take my time as I go.

They were washed and dried and here I'm about to snip all the tails off prior to steam pressing them.    Hems were turned, pressed and pinned. I had a few evenings where I hand sewed all hems. I quite like the hand work and you feel productive as you watch the telly.

Now for some beauty shots....

They measure 22 inches wide and approximately 30-32 inches in length . Yes, there was a lot of shrinkage plus the hems.

A nice satisfying stack of softness.   Once again, thank you to Nancy of New Hampshire for the cross border assistance. Weaver are wonderful everywhere!    🌎 😊