Anatomy of a Hand Towel

Its been just over two years now since I walked into my first Midnight Shuttles Guild meeting on a "dark and stormy" November night.  Being completely new to town, I had no idea where I was going; the wind was howling and the rain was coming in sideways and I was trying to find a little blue house down by the seashore.  Its called Sybil's cottage as that is where famous artist Sybil Andrews had lived.  I blew in a few minutes late and have felt at home there ever since.   A warm and caring group of people...

I have shown them some of my weaving as show and tell at meetings and one member asked if it was possible for me to do a small program on finishing details and techniques.  Reasonable enough request but it would mean having a variety of finished samples on hand, and some in mid progress to show them. Since I do all my work on floor looms, and finish things to completion (no WIP's), how could I demonstrate this in as a small program?   My work is done on finished items and then usually sold and gone. I have posted blog posts here that show different techniques I've used but that's meant for the solitary browser, who at best, may share the link with a friend or two.

Then I got the idea of setting something up on a table loom to demonstrate and show them..... then it evolved into a group project where the loom is passed around.  So the birth of the guest towel project was hatched.  🐣

I got ahold of the guild's 8 shaft Dorothy table loom and found it needed a good cleaning and tune up.  I cleaned it with Murphy's oil soap and some diligent scrubbing and took some corrosion off the metal bits.  All the lashing cords came off and were washed and rethreaded back on. 

I noticed it had some bits missing and some rather elderly and sparse wires heddles. Not enough for my project ( and there were no heddles at all on shafts five to eight!).  I was given approval to purchase some new inserted eye heddles from Leclerc and one member's husband kindly made some beautiful oak lease sticks. The old girl was looking rather grand now!

I had planned a four shaft Swedish lace project, found in The Handweaver's Pattern Directory by Anne Dixon (page 191),  to do a small hand towel each, using 10/2 cottons, and featuring hemstitching details.   So I wound a six yard warp, sett 24 epi and Hubby helped me beam it.

Here's the loom being threaded. Its a bit of a reach to even the front four shafts!  (There are holes predrilled in the sides so I suspect this could be added to to make it a twelve shaft. It would explain the reach.)

The new heddles just slip along nicely.....and being Swedish lace, its a heavier count for heddles on shafts one and two.

As you can see here in this close up below, the inserted eye is nicely open and smooth for any yarn type with out fear of snags or pinching. Being stainless steel, there's no corrosion to deal with either.

The new oak lease sticks are doing a fine job!

Finally, I trussed up the beater bar assembly to stand upright and sleyed the 12 dent reed.  

Ready to lace on. I'm being economical with the warp as there are 11-12 participants. I might even need to do a second warp if some want to weave more than one.

I had used my Fiberworks program to work out the project width and number of lace repeats. At 12.88 inches in the reed, its using a great deal of the loom's width.  I had  planned a rough outline of how the towel will be proportioned, but only weaving one up will tell you the final result.  Below are two pictures showing hem allowance of six inches done and the motif border is complete and hemstitching is under way.

I found this diagram on line which shows the steps nicely too.

Then I changed from the cream  10/2 cotton (same as the warp) and used a slightly deeper beige called Shell and wove the main part of the towel doing eleven repeats of blocks A and B and ended with a final A to balance.
Block A:  (do 3 times)
1, 3
2
1, 3
2
1, 3
2, 4

Block B: (do once)
1
2, 4
1
2, 4
1
2, 4
1, 3

This progressed along nicely and with a final block A and 8-9 pics of plain weave, it measured roughly 13- 13 1/2 inches and I switched to the cream 10/2 and wove an inch of plain weave.   Then using my colour change as my 'bottom line', I did a row of Italian hemstitching (or box hemstitching as I have also heard it called).  The entire box is in the cream section. You can also find diagrams showing this in  Finishing Touches for the Handweaver by Virginia West (page 24) .  This book should be in every weaver's library.

step one: choose the size of the box, here its 3 x 3 threads.

Step 2: bottom right hand corner to to left hand corner and make the 'floor of the house'

Step 3: Go from top right corner to bottom left corner to make the 'roof of the house'

Step 4: Go from top right corner to three threads left into new territory, and make the 'wall of the house'
...and repeat. 😊

I resumed weaving the five inch hem on the towel, and also added some fine scrap yarn to hold my edges and cut out off the loom! Why five inches and not six as the front was done? I like the look of a slightly smaller back hem and it places all the emphasis on the front where you did all that pretty stitching! The Italian hemstitching on the back hem gives it a neat treatment and emphasizes the colour change.  I machine straight stitched the edge of the cream hems to secure them and washed by hand.  While still damp, I gave it a good steam pressing with my Singer press.

The hems were folded into thirds, pressed and then hand sewn  as shown here.  Voila! the towel is complete.

Now: what would I do differently?   The over all length of the towel is just a tad bit too long for the narrow width so perhaps reduce the lace repeats to ten instead of eleven?  I feel it would have a better proportion.

I also struggled with getting a good tension on the loom and so my edges are not to my usual standard.... but as I have heard said many a time, that's a Dorothy loom for you.   I cranked it up as best I could but still end up laying the weft in pic by pic which meant it took a long time to weave.

Also it was difficult to get a good tap with the beater if you advanced that bit too far (spongy feel), so there really is a 'sweet spot' of only two inches with the table loom. You would advance the warp and then fight to get the tension right all over again.

 I considered using a small temple to help reduce draw in but reckoned my students may not have one to hand so best to work without it.  The end result of this is the lace portion draws in further than the hems.  I decided this is a teachable moment to discuss drawn in.  It produces a full sized towel sample of Swedish lace and its unique little windowpane look, and features  hemstitching techniques  and (for many) using finer threads than they normally do.  Lots of new things all wrapped into one project!

.... but give me a floor loom any day!

So here are some beauty shots....

My notes to travel with the loom are almost set and I will be in touch with a student shortly to take the loom.   I think this loom may be circulating for awhile given everyone's schedules!

If at First You Don't Succeed.....

We had a nasty rain and wind storm recently and the next morning as the sun broke through, this fine fellow came and sat on a branch near our house to fluff up and dry off.  Its a sharp shinned hawk and the first one that we have seen here. He stayed for over an hour warming up and having a major preening session.  I guess if we put up a bird feeder they would visit more often..... as it eats other small birds that eat seed off the ground.  Ah, we won't be doing that....

If we could roll the clock back a few weeks..... okay, a couple of months at least!  I had wound a fine linen warp of 40/2 of approx 10 yards in length. I was looking forward to weaving up some guest towels and enjoying that crisp look that comes with linen and hemstitching! This was the very start and a test bit to check the threading:

The sett was 36 epi and I had used this before with great success but this time it wasn't working so well for me. The warp threads were literally binding on each other.     Okay, so I resleyed to 32 epi, thinking the reduction of four warp ends would give them more elbow room.      Apparently not....

So a third sley and the sett is now 28 epi and now only some were grabbing each other where they were in the same dent and the tension was all screwy on the left hand side.  I also really didn't like the way the warp threads were bunching up  and producing very heavy reed marks.

So I sat and considered my investment of time and yarn:  its been threaded twice,  I fixed two threading errors, resleyed three times and its still not resolved.   I wanted to have this project on, woven up and off the loom before I  went for my surgery the end of September.  The goal was to be able to hand sew the hems while I recovered. I also wanted to get a new warp on the loom so it was all set and ready to weave when I was ready to get back in the game.

So out came the scissors....     Yup, all of it, in the garbage.    No regrets.

So I adjusted the project to work with 10/2 cotton and got busy winding a warp of natural colour mercerized cotton.  Bruce helped me wind on the eleven yards. This time everything went just right! There were no threading errors, no sleying errors, nice even warp tension and the 24 epi sett worked beautifully.

*Big sigh of relief!*

I wove my hem allowance, then hemstitched every four warp threads. Then I placed a thick cord and then started on the border.  I pulled out the slippery cord out and then hemstitched the top edge.    Complete the lace detail in the border and then hemstitch the top edge.   Place the cord again and weave the initial plain weave shots for the main portion of the towel. Pull the cord again and hemstitch the final edge using what ever colour of weft is being used for the towel.     {If you give this a try yourself, be sure to leave  five times the width of the project for the hemstitch yarn. }

Virginia West's classic book  "Finishing Touches for the Handweaver"     This book is a real treasure if you wish to have your work beautifully finished. It was a game changer for me when I got my copy nearly twenty years ago!

I had purchased some cones of yarn in a series of soft neutral colours in a fine bamboo (6300 yds/lb) and decided to use them as my weft. The Bambu 12 is soft, has a great sheen and and would give the towels a lovely hand. They would be naturally anti microbial and anti fungal which is a nice property to have in a small towels that might sit wet after hand washing.

I'm weaving an eight shaft huck lace that makes a repeating diamond pattern. Its something I had played around with in my Fiberworks program.  I planned to make half the towels with the diamond motif and the other half would have a design I'm calling lattice and flower. I played around with the treadling options to find a pleasing pattern.

I had a project plan guide beside me:  three inches for the hem, a total of eighteen inches for the main part of the towel (including the fancy border), then three inches for the back hem. The hems and border were done with white against the natural, with a colour for the main part of the lace.   I used white for the back hem as well and did full hemstitching where they changed.  {be sure to use seven times the width for this style}. See below and remember to click on the pictures to enlarge:

So that was five rows of hemstitching per towel and over a dozen towels that totals 60 rows altogether.   What the heck was I thinking??   Do a fast project and get it off the loom and reloaded before my surgery date???   I also had to warp up and load the Megado and then we decided to re-assemble the tapestry loom over leaving it as a pile of lumber on the floor.   Timing was going to be tight!

The tapestry loom was re-built, and the Megado loaded. That would be the first choice of loom to weave on thanks to the one treadle and light action so it made sense to get it done first.  After that, I worked away on the towels and got my speed in hemstitching up to new world record speeds!    It was tight for time but the warp came off and a new one went on the same day which also included being hoisted up on crates to change the tie up!

I measured and pressed the hems and pinned them .   It was a nice stack of hand work waiting for my return!   Then, I indulged in a studio cleanup too which I must admit felt real good. My creative work space was all set for when I would be ready.

Anaesthesia does funny things to your head. It makes you fuzzy minded and clumsy for a time. Its surprising how long it lasts in your system. Then there's the pain meds after surgery which add their own complexity to the mix.   I guess it was nearly 3 weeks after my surgery that I was interested enough to try sewing hems.  The cloth was quite fine so good light was necessary but I slowly inched my way across one hem after another.  

Last week I placed them into a gentle wash cycle  and once spun out, I trimmed off any tails and let them line dry over night.  Next morning I lowered the ironing board and pulled up a chair.  I steamed pressed them and I'm very happy with them!  I found only one that had a treadling error, which we politely call a second.

Its a tough time of year to photograph anything.... its so darn dark!  But with every light on in the house and using the 'brighten' function in my editing program I got some nice pictures.  There are six towels with the diamond pattern....

There are five towels with the lattice and flower pattern:

They measure thirteen inches wide by nineteen and a half inches in length. The colours are a soft butter yellow, green tea green, snowy white, a light beige called water chestnut,  and a blue green. The sheen from the bamboo is lovely and the fine cloth has a nice weight to it.   If we do get a bright sunny day, I might try re-photographing them, but this will have to do until then.

So this project was all woven before my surgery (on a wonky knee no less) and I'm happy to report that I have made a start on trying to weave again this past week at six weeks post operative!

I did do some work on the Megado, where I used mainly my right leg for 30-40 treadlings then I would do 10-15 with my left leg and so on. I took the next day off to see how it felt and it was fine.

So yesterday I sat down on my bench and tried two treadling repeats at my Spring loom:

In the case of this treadling plan there is an even division between left and right leg so they both got an equal workout. It didn't feel too bad at all!  I did only two repeats.  My physiotherapist has given me the go ahead to weave and called it a "great quad strengthening exercise" and asked if I had a spinning wheel too?   I said yes and she she told me it was okay to use it as well! 

I'm not 100 % as yet and still a lot of inner healing and more exercises to go, but I feel like I'm finally on the way back!

Moving Ahead Again

Well, look who's back.... this is year two of a three year cycle...

They are feasting on the bear berry flowers. Its like a drug to them!  They munch away and then seem to go into a catatonic state. You can pick them off and they don't wriggle or scrap with you!

There are a lot less of the little beggars this time round, but its still gross finding them on your house, decks and crawling on window screens and all through the grass as they make their way up hill.  It all lasts about two to three weeks and then they make cocoons and become moths. The wave of their infestation is moving northward towards Nanaimo. The bushes and trees were covered there last week! Next year they will be back again but less again and hopefully we can get back to normal around here again. { There is a small wasp that takes advantage of the increase of caterpillars and lays small egg on their backs. We look for ones with small white dots on their backs and leave those. Nature is going to do a better job then we ever could! Nothing else eats them.}

The weather has warmed up here finally. We've had a cool, wet spring. Poor Calli, our Airedale was gasping from the heat with her long coat so she went to a new dog spa and had a double bath, cut and mani /pedi.  They did a real nice job on her cut and she looks like an Airedale once again (don't ask about the last time!)

She turned three years old in April and is well settled in with us and has us firmly wrapped around her paw.  She was ten months old when she moved in. She even 'talks' to us by using grunty noises and she can throw a lot of attitude into a grunt!  Just forget a cookie at bedtime and see what you get! What else can I tell you? Well, she's very gentle and this afternoon, she backed away from a butterfly.  She checked over her shoulder to see where 'mum' was and slowly inched her way forward to check it out.... with back legs stretched way back in case she needed a fast getaway!

Calli spends most afternoons napping either on her bed in my studio near the patio door with a view of outside.... or the bed beside Bruce's desk. Toys and balls litter the hallway between the two rooms.

There is even a toy in my loom bench... you just never know when there might be a chance to throw a ball. This was my 'loom d' jour' today and just as I left it. The Louet Spring is a real little workhorse. I have a 10/2 mercerised cotton warp on to weave off a dozen guest towels. They make nice gifts and are a nice touch to place beside the hand basin for visitors to dry their hands on.  The hemstitching slows things down but its the one detail that makes them look well put together later on. I'm on towel number six now and using a softly twisted bamboo as weft: soft teal, cream, white and a bronze. I'm very low on weft yarn and so you know what that means! Yup, yarn store visit coming up quick on Monday. I've called ahead and they have lots to choose from (phew!)
Here are some views of the work under way:

There is also a cream on cream towel, plus another with a cream hem allowance and white weft on another towel on the cloth beam roll. The sett is 28 epi and its a 12 shaft twill that I have used before. Does it look familiar?   Think book marks and then runners  :)  I'll give you more details and data on the current project when they are off loom, hemmed and done okay?

Towels on the big loom are waiting for my knee to feel a bit better. That loom requires a deep leg push and its too difficult for my left knee right now. Its frustrating as I would really like to get them finished. {Surgeon appointment on Tuesday!}  That's a second warping board hanging on the side of the loom so I can have two warps being wound at one time. Bruce added extra dowels across the bottom so I can have fractions of a yard wound, over just whole yard increments. You can see a couple of warps already done and waiting their turn (eventually!)

My next design challenge is to use the existing tie up on the Louet and mix it with various drafts in Fiberworks and see how the tie up changes the draft. It will be fun to see what I can come up with!  It will become the next project on the Spring.

There's going to be a fair amount of running around town, appointments and such in the coming days ahead. Its a busy time of year for everyone as the great outdoors calls and there are herds of tourists and relatives on the move to greener pastures around the province and country! Hopefully you are all looking forward to some time with friends and enjoying  summer events. While I can't get my floor looms out the door to the deck, I'm going to take my spinning wheel out there and enjoy the breeze. When I don't have to throw a ball that is!

Girl needs her beauty sleep.

More Stitching... Part 2

Bruce on his Kubota

Winter 2010 has hit with a wallop and my hubby *finally* got to push some snow around!  He bought the tractor during a heat wave in July 2008 and it had yet to see any snow. From what we hear, this is just the start and the worse is yet to come. He'll get to fine tune his technique before too long!

There seems to have been some confusion with regards to what I tried to show you in my previous post. I think it might stem from me perhaps not showing the bottom edge of the towel and the dividing half inch of  waste yarn between towels (?)  Some thought I might be cutting the towels apart between the hemstitching.... er, nope!
I would ask you to please ignore for the time being all aspects of the actual project (yarns, sett and pattern) for now. That will be all revealed to you once they are off the loom and finished. We'll do a full show and tell then, including the draft. For now let's just focus on the techniques being shown. If I'm not clear enough with my descriptions, please email me at weeverwoman at yahoo dot com.  I am trying my best though! I have a whole new respect for weavers who write  how-to books! (Such patience!!)

  Here is a picture of a fully finished and hand hemmed guest towel I wove from a previous project to give you an idea of what we are trying to accomplish here:

I would like to take our previous hemstitching demo a bit further and show you another technique I've used before with good success. It might be a good idea to click on this link and reread the previous post and get back up to speed on our previous discussion.

As described in the previous post I have woven half an inch of scrap yarn to separate each towel woven, then I wove two inches for my hem allowance and hemstitched every six ends.  I slipped in my handy spacer yarn and then after playing with the treadling repeat a bit, I wove a medallion style pattern. It has a row of border treadling 1 to 8, then one little pattern repeat that I made sure reversed nicely, then a border row treadled 8 to 1. I wanted this to be a complete little section, or panel all to its self and you'll see why in just a minute. In the picture above I'm ladder hemstitching and working on the top row. Clicking on any of the pictures will enlarge them for better detail.

Then using the weft tail I left at the end of the pattern repeat, I hemstitch the top edge portion as well.

Next, I have placed my spacer in again and leaving a weft tail (approx weft yarn four times the width of the warp) I weave a border row and the regular pattern repeat. We'll pause the weaving here for now and pull the spacer out. I hold the left edge steady and pull the cord/ spacer yarn out slowly from the right.

Then for the fourth row, we hemstitch again!  Then we resume our weaving of the rest of the towel. What I do at the end of the towel is to revert back to my hem colour and weave another 2" in white. You could just use the same colour as the towel and weave a border repeat by way of hem allowance. Its all a matter of choice. I do not hemstitch this end out of choice. Just picture the towel neatly folded on the counter with the fancy hemstitching facing up. For guest towels I only hemstitched the leading presentation edge.... but you can hemstitch the last hem if you like.

A note on sewing the hems: I always handsew small towels and runners, traycloths and even some kitchen towels. I'm not much of a machine sewer and I find that handsewing produces a 'no line look' that I prefer. I do machine sew some towels but try to 'stitch in the ditch'.

I normally only do something like this panel hemstitching technique on narrow projects such as these guest towels or something very special such as a runner. Its gorgeous on the ends of a scarf! Yes, it is time consuming but it adds so much to a project! Guest towels are something special that you lay out by the bathroom vanity when you have guests in your home, or give as a gift. What better way to showcase what you do by a few extra special touches?  Once these are off loom, hemmed and wet finished, and well pressed.... they will showcase you as a weaver! 

I'm weaving along slowly and wish this warp was complete and off the loom to show you how they will look!

Let me leave you with a view of Maple Mountain after our first major snowfall. Its worth clicking on to see larger.

Weather forecast is in... more snow this week as two fronts collide over us! Tractor Man is at the ready...