BCW Towel Exchange towels

We finally had our exchange last Monday, after postponing several times. Here's the ones I wove on my 8 shaft table loom. My first warp with random stripes, and my first attempt at plaid (also random). I brought the plaid one in to exchange, but the striped one stayed at home because the bad weaving didn't improve in the wash. ;)

That's too bad, because I really liked the pattern of the striped one. I noticed that my friend Jane's blanket had a cool weave structure, so I charted it one day. It would take 12 shafts to weave as it is, but I shrank it down to 8 shafts and added color. I love the pinwheel effect! I'm going to try that again in thicker yarn for a baby blanket or something similar.

The plaid one was the first towel picked. I really like it and I'm very pleased someone else did, too. It just came together. 

I chose one of my favorite twill drafts from the past study topic and reversed it every now and then, changing colors as I felt the need to.

Playing with a Straight Threading

In the Handweaver's Guild of Boulder, there is a Complex Weavers interest group. I decided to join when it started up even though I was a pretty new weaver. Nothing wrong with having the most to learn, especially when many of the others have been weaving for decades.

These ladies are amazing! They know their way around rules I haven't even learned yet.

Anyway, we've been working our way through Bonnie Inouye's book Exploring Multishaft Design this year. The first 6 chapters deal with what you can do design wise on a straight threading. So I put on a long warp and made mugrugs for chapter 1, twills. Some of the liftplans I made looked pretty good, so I wound a 7 yard warp pf 6/2 cotton and wove some towels. The fringe turned out to be a bad idea with that particular yarn, but overall I'm quite pleased. I got to play with pattern, and color too. I'm still figuring out how color works in weaving, mostly by imitation and my own trial and error.

I wove these in the spring but didn't get them out of the camera until last week.