Pandemic Gift Towels

At long last, here are the Stripes and Blocks Kitchen Towels I started in late March. It took me about a month to finish this project, but I learned a lot along the way and am quite pleased with the outcome. These are a special 40th birthday gift for a friend, who said she likes purples and navy. What a lovely color scheme:

This is 8/2 cotton, by the way, in these colors (clockwise from top left):

• Magenta - Y5214
• Periwinkle - Y5067
• Mauve pale (I think of this as purple) - Y5120
• Navy - Y-5981

I also got a cone of 16/2 cotton in navy to use in the folded hem area.

I used the direct warping technique and was surprised the warp for two towels was so long (2.5 yards). I followed the pattern anyway, but as I suspected, I had a lot of loom waste left at the end. Note my trusty Shakespeare book ensuring that the loom doesn't move during this process!

These threads are doubled in each slot and hole on a 12-dent heddle, so I effectively have 24 epi (ends per inch). I have grown to love warping double strands because it means I don't have to move threads over into the hole - I just direct warp them into the holes. Here are are all warped and ready to weave:

The towels are woven with a single strand of 8/2 cotton, except in the blocks, which use an inlay technique with doubled thread. The inlay is possible because a pick up stick is used on the navy part of the warp to raise some threads - and where a thread is picked up, it's only one thread of the pair in the slot. It's hard to see in a photo, but here's a closeup of the beginning of a block - if you look carefully, you'll see a small pick up shed:

I also made a short video showing how to work the inlay block.

These inlay sections are like potato chip knitting - every time I finished one, I wanted to get right to the next section to see how it would look. This is the towel that was worked first:

Because it has a large section of plain weave in navy, it was easy to use a paper guide marked where to begin the last two rows of blocks and the hem. Since I'd already worked one hem and rows of blocks, I could measure them and know where to stop working the plain weave section. This worked great.

The second towel has blocks AND weft stripes which are carefully spaced:

My guide showed me that I was going to get a shorter towel, but I didn't want to add more navy on the end than the beginning already had - and I didn't have room for another repeat of stripe-blocks-stripe. So I just ended it. If I weave this set again, I will start with towel #2, note its length, and then make towel #1 to match. #1 is easier to customize in terms of length.

The blocks stand up a bit on the front of the towel (which is pleasing), while only a shadow of them is visible on the back:

The pattern said that the finished towels would measure 17" x 22". How did mine turn out?

Towel #1 was 17" x 21.625", and #2 was 16.75" by 19.375". So my width was dead on for the first towel but got tighter as I went on (oops), and my length was only 3/8 inch short for towel #1. I lost 15.2% to shrinkage and take up. These towels are still a bit smaller than my ideal kitchen towel, which is 17.5" x 25".

This is the first time I've used doubled 8/2 cotton in the warp on my 12-dent heddle (I've done it with 10-dent, though). When I initially took these off the loom, I wondered if the fabric was too dense. This is what the fabric looks like - on a table - before wet finishing. You can't really see through the weave to the table below:

I took it outside to try looking through the fabric with natural light, and was relieved to see daylight:

The finished fabric is quite nice.

Lessons learned:

• Read the entire pattern before beginning (or at least read one step ahead). I put my warp on backwards (starting with the purple stripes rather than the navy section), which means the navy section ended in a hole. The pattern says it should be in a slot. So I had to take the loom off the stand and fold it in half to rethread every slot and hole before tying on to the front beam. It is a long reach to the heddle from the front, so the extra work of taking the loom off the stand and folding it makes a big difference in terms of back strain. Still, that whole business could have been avoided if I'd read more carefully.
• I did not need as much loom waste as the pattern calculated (it seemed wasteful). I usually plan on 24" for the Flip loom.
• I loved having 16/2 cotton for the hem area. I might start ordering that when I get new colors for projects.
• If I work this pattern again, start with towel #2 and then make #1 to match (in length). 

Now I need to make a quarantine contact-less delivery to the recipient!