Christmas Towels #2

It’s December 26 so now I can show you my second batch of Christmas towels. I still have to give two of them tomorrow morning, and mail one to a friend who won’t be home for weeks, but neither of those people will be reading my blog, so it’s safe to proceed.

After I made the eight towels on the neutral weave, I had to do something with more color. So I set up a warp with white, red, and black in it.

I wove these and the neutral towels in 8/2 unmercerized cotton, sett at 21 EPI. I was a bit concerned that they’d be too loose for towels, since this was the sett I’d used for plain weave, but I liked the neutral ones fine after wet finishing so stayed with it for the second batch.

I wanted to weave half of them in plaid, half with a solid white weft.

The first time I made a mistake in my treadling, repeating the 1-2-3-4 treadling with the colored weft, not realizing that I was only supposed to do that with white. I didn’t notice it until I had a set of red and black woven, and by then I decided I didn’t want to unweave it all, I’d follow that pattern for the rest of this towel. Here’s how the elongated plaid looks.

Then I wove two more towels with the correct treadling for a true plaid. I really like the interplay of colors in these towels.

I felt like I was running out of time, so needed to do some with a solid white weft to make myself feel better. I used two different treadling patterns…

Here’s how they turned out.

I decided that for the last one I’d do plain weave. My friend had seen the red & white towels I wove last summer and really liked the red parts, so I started weaving with a red weft. I decided I’d do some white and black in the middle, then go back to red. This is my least favorite towel, for sure. I gave it to my neighbor, not my friend.

Now I have to get back to weaving for the juries.