Monday, January 15, 2007

Huck Towels 2

By Leigh

With the workshop in full swing, I am spending more time at the computer than at the loom these days. That doesn't mean that progress isn't being made however.

Huck towel on the loom.  8/2 cotton, white warp & royal blue weft. So far I've woven 5 and 1/2 huck dish towels, each in a different variation of huck, and I'm enjoying every relaxing minute of it. All the drafts were taken from Helene Bress's The Weaving Book.

After my rough start, I had hoped the weaving would move along quickly. And it has for the most part, though I haven't been without problems.......

Unintentional weft loops at the selvedges!I couldn't live with these uninvited weft loops, so I unwove those several inches and tried again.

One thing I'm puzzling over is my selvedges. Not because the are especially unsightly, but because my originial idea of plain weave edges has gone by the wayside as I've experimented with different variations of huck. I reckon this is a limitation of having only 4 shafts to works with. I did not use floating selvedges and the result is that they are being bound by the weft. See what I mean.......

One huck variation.
Another huck variation.
I'm not sure how much of a problem this will end up being with dish towels. At the moment I've taken on a "wait and see" attitude. It will be in the using and the washing that I'll see how well they ultimately stand up.

In the mean time, I've happily weaving away as I have the time, and am looking forward to seeing how these look after they are washed.


Related Posts:
Lace Sampler - Huck
Huck Towels 1
Huck Towels 3
Another Warp for Huck
Finishing Up the Huck (For Now)
Huck Dishtowels Finished
:)

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Love the cats playing with wool!!! mine sleep in it and they smell so good. I always know when they have been in the barn. Beautiful huck towels I love the blue and white the combination and pattern are perfect.

Anonymous said...

"...I'm enjoying every relaxing minute of it..." Man, I envy those words! Not only is my loom bare and naked, it's folded up in the garage at the moment. Sigh. Well, more power to ya! I'll get there someday.

Charleen said...

I agree with Peg that floating selvedges would be good. The problem with plain weave edges is, even in you have enough harnesses the plain weave doesn't match the rest of the fabric and it can pucker and break threads. I tried that for a set of twill towels and had all sorts of problems until I used a floating selvedge. Also, after washing the selvedges may look just fine.

Leigh said...

Thank you Peg and Charleen. I'm going to tie and and weave one more set of towels, this time with a floating selvedge. I always use one for twills, but I'm not sure why I omitted it here!

Dawn said...

Hi Leigh. I see you are weaving blue and white towels, I am just about to start some of these too, only not huck I am doing a 16sh twill, well will be when I get the warping finished.
Thanks for comments on my blog. I see your pics are much clearer than mine, do you have a secret to uploading yours?

Renee Nefe said...

Very pretty. We tried to listen to the lady at the stock show talk about spinning and weaving yesterday...but she kept talking to the folks who got there before we did and she wasn't that interesting.
I was able to point to the spinning wheel and tell DD about it and then point out the loom. The lady had a lap loom there as well.