Mixed Trio

I finally finished the set of towels that were on my Flip loom. I warped these up in late September so it took me a couple of months, but they turned out great!

It was a bit breezy when I took these photos, so consider it an action shot. To recap, these are the "mixed warp" towels which use both 8/4 cotton (the navy blue) and Mallo cotton slub yarn (reads as white, but is really a pale green) in the warp. The pattern suggested using all blue in the weft (that's the towel on the left), all green in the weft (that's the one on the right), and a stripey combo. I did not have enough blue yarn left to work the stripe pattern that would result in a classic gingham look, so I subbed in a dark cranberry red for the blue weft. I really like the result! Here is how towel #3 looked on the loom:

As usual, I learned a few things on this project. First, I learned how to replace a warp thread, which is really dead easy. I also learned that it would be best if I had even more waste warp built into my calculations - the last towel was pretty difficult to work in the final inches. I also decided it would be best if I trimmed my unfinished warp ends to about 2" before wet finishing them in the washing machine - this is short enough not to tangle badly, but long enough to trim them down with a clean cut before hemming them. I didn't do that with this particular towel end, and it was badly tangled:

Thanks to towel #3, I got a lot better at working with two shuttles and carrying my extra one up the side as if it were another warp thread. The carried slub will always be a bit noticeable because of the thick spots, but I did okay here:

Here are all three finished fabrics. It is endlessly fascinating how you can create 3 completely different looks using the same warp threads:

As usual, my target dimensions for each towel were 25" x 17.5". I didn't expect these towels to be exactly the same after finishing because the different types of yarn shrink differently, and each towel contains different amounts of those different yarns. The finished towels measured 23.75"-25.25" in length, and 16.5"-17.25" in width. Fairly close to what I intended, and I'll take it!

I actually finished hemming these on the Saturday night of Thanksgiving weekend, but I couldn't photograph them on Sunday due to rainy and extremely gray weather. This is the time of year when I only have daylight hours to photograph outdoors on the weekend, so I've been waiting to share them with you.

There are two more towel patterns to explore in the Weaver's PlayBox #2 (cotton & linen). Next up is the Fibonacci-Striped Warp, though I won't actually be warping Fibonacci stripes due to my available yardage. The pattern is written for a 2-towel warp with towels measuring about 12x17". I like big towels (and I cannot lie) so I am upsizing for a 17.5" x 25" towel. By carefully planning my warp stripes, I expect to use almost every inch of the two DK weight yarns that came in the kit. One is a cotton-linen blend, and the other is 100% cotton. I've done my math and am ready to warp when the schedule allows.

Towels are fun!