Handmade Holiday, part 2

I just can’t get enough of the look of a new warp as it’s wound on the back beam, and this one for RA & NP is no exception. Their shared baby wrap warp is on my loom now. Here you can see both sides of the wrap as it passes over the cloth beam. (The colors ar

In fact, moments ago I finished weaving RA’s wrap with a black tencel weft and started on NP’s with a navy cotton weft.

So what are the other holiday gifts I made?

My daughter requested colorful towels for her kitchen as Christmas presents. Different towels for each season. Here was the criteria I used:

• I wouldn’t buy any yarn for these projects, instead using only yarns from my stash.
• I would give her 2 towels for each season and have 2 additional towels per season. I would have loved to have more ‘extra’ towels, but time was not on my side since I didn’t get the first towel started until after Thanksgiving. So I warped for 4 towels per season.
• I would use different weaving drafts for the towels: 1 crackle, 1 lace, 1 straight draw, and 1?? Except I ended up doing 2 straight draw because of the number of colors in the warps.
• My daughter would get the towels with any weaving errors, selvedge issues, or other imperfections; I’d sell the others.

All towels were woven predominantly with Maurice Brassard 8/2 cotton. Here’s the info and photos of each towel set.

Christmas towels: warp: cerise; weft: 1 red, 2 raspberry, 1 gris pale (I thought the pale gray would look like silver with the cerise. It just looks dull. I also ran out of warp for this one so it’s quite short.)

Springtime towels: warp: vert pale, cobalt, handpainted cotton/hemp; weft: 2 jaune pale, 1 orange pale, 1 vert pale

Summer towels: warp: homestead cotton baby blue, blue, nassau blue, Maurice Brassard vert pale; weft: 1 pale blue, 1 A Touch of Twist variegated cotton slub, 2 plaid

Autumn towels: warp: orange pale, brun moyen, limette pale, orange brule, cerise, jaune fonce, sapin, rouille, olive; weft: 1 orange brule, 1 rouille, 2 cerise

Now you’ve seen it all…what came off my loom recently and what’s on it now. I’ve got to go walk Jack, then back to the loom.