Weaving outside the lines

​When looking at project drafts/projects we don’t always want to do it exactly as written. Maybe we want to substitute a different weight warp, or add a feature, or try out a new selvedge scheme. Weaving is not like coloring — it is permissible, and often desirable to “color” outside the lines!
I had two projects in mind, which needed some changes.

​Project #1 Spinning Lap Towels

The first was a project from Handwoven Design Collection 18 – A Lap Towel for Spinning. Here is their description:
“This towel is really a sort of lap rug for spinners. It’s designed to keep fuzz off your good slacks — or jeans! Wear it light side up when spinning dark fiber and dark side up when spinning light fiber, and it will also help you see what you’re doing. The little pockets are handy for oil cans, threading hooks, extra drive bands — whatever you’d like to have with you while you spin. A 1/3 broken twill makes this towel very fast and easy to weave“
I wanted to make a few changes. I kept the color schemes of dark and light (white warp, darker weft) but mixed it up a little with weft other than white for the pockets. I did not change the weave structure at all or the weight of the yarns to use.

• The directions called for a floating selvedge — I have stopped loving this method and look for other ways to get a nice edge, SO I decided to add plain weave borders — 5 extra threads on each side. More about this later
• The directions only called for a single pocket — which would show up on the dark side, I felt that each side of the lap towel should have its own pocket, so I adjusted the length of the warp to accommodate an additional pocket.
• The directions did not do anything about the fact that the pocket was sort of a shallow, wide pouch — that would hang open and spill out your tools — I decided to put a decorative machine stitch down the middle and create 2 segments.

The 5/2 Mercerized cotton warp is wound, now it’s time to dress the loom.​

​What did I learn from my changes?

The Plain Weave Selvedge — plain weave and 1/3 broken twill do not play happily together.

• I had to use 2 extra shafts for the plain weave borders.  It DID finally work out, but had to be tweaked a bit.  I had to adjust the shaft cords to get the correct height, since there were so few heddles on the shaft, and I had to put some weights on the shafts as well.  But in the end I was able to get good sheds.
• The twill was too thick for the much thinner plain weave. The selvedge looked GREAT, but it wanted to fold, because of the thicker twill.  Ah well — after the first towel I removed the extra shafts, re-did the tie-up and cut off all but 2 edge threads on each side, these became floating selvedges.  Rats
• After the next towel, I decided that the double thread was too much and changed to a traditional floating selvedge — using Asford’s floating selvedge system with LOTS of weights to keep it taut.
• 1/3 Twill makes funky edges no matter what you do, so when I finished the towels I used some of the weft to do a hand stitched blanket stitch for the full length of each side.  I was very pleased with the result.

Double Pockets — this idea worked out great.  Now, no matter which side you are using, there is a pocket at the edge for your tools.  
The weave is weft faced and does make a “lap rug”.  It is thick and stays in place.  All in all — a good project with good results.

​A Gallery of Lap Towels

You can buy one at the Dakota Designs Shop. 

​Project #2 Swedish Towels

JoAnne Hall has a nice draft – available for Free for Swedish toweling, they are called Anna Towels. The project can be done in either plain weave, straight twill, broken twill, herringbone, goose eye, or 8 shaft block twill. I love the colors of white background with blue and yellow stripes.

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HOWEVER, I really wanted to use 16/2 cotton instead of 8/2. This was an easy step outside the lines. There were a few adjustments to make.

• 16/2 is approximately half the weight of 8/2 cotton. So instead of 20 epi, I would do 40 epi and the same would apply to the picks per inch. This makes it possible to determine the # of threads. 912 threads! Well, I’ve done a thousand threads before — there are time saving devices.
• I decided to send to Vavstuga for an 80/10 metric reed. All my finer reeds are metric and the larger ones are Imperial — it just worked out that way. I would use 2 ends per dent — this gave me the 40 epi that I needed.
• The directions are meant to go with a kit of pre-wound warp — so I had to make my own decisions as to how long to make the warp. I decided to go with 7 yards this will give me 7 + towels — each would be a few inches shy of 36 — due to the block structure 1.5″ for block #1 and .5″ for block #2 (these alternate throughout the towel) with 1″ on each end for hem. — it worked out to around 34″ per towel.

​Winding the Warp

I don’t know about you, but even holding two threads at a time, that’s 456 ends — lots of turns on the ole warping mill — with color changes! JoAnne has this neat trick. Wind both bouts at once, in one long warp. NOTE: this only works when you have a symmetrical warp order — or if the warp is all the same color/type.

• Wind the warp TWICE as long with a cross at each end.
• Put a guide string on (now for a 14 yard warp) and TIE ON the doubled warp yarn in the center of the guide string — Start winding.
• All of the color changes occur at the center point.
• When you have made 114 FULL turns (remember the warp is doubled) you will actually have two bouts that are connected (we’ll cut them apart) each with 456 ends (114 turns *2 passes/turn * 2 threads = 456)
• Use Warp ties as usual, placing one VERY tightly on each side of the center mark. Get a helper and remove the warp. Have your helper hold the 2 crosses — on in each hand, while you find the center and CUT it.

​Color changes

The instructions have the warp color order — just double each color section and remember to ONLY go the the halfway point (remember you’re doing 2 bouts at the same time)
I did this with the 16/2 cotton and it worked so beautifully!

​Threading

I did the block threading, so there is block 1 and block 2. Again you double her instructions. If she says to thread block #1 1 time — you do it 2 times.

Keep TRACK of EVERY CHANGE

I have a notebook where I paste parts of the original instructions and my notes on the changes. I might want to reproduce the project at some point in the future.

The Moral of the Story?

Don’t be afraid to take a project and make it your own. Think about the directions, do they make sense for you? Is it using the warp you want (or have on hand)? It does take some planning, and some note taking, and a little bit of double checking, but in the end it IS worth it and you’ve taken that first step on a more creative journey.