My first two crackle bath mats are finished and in service!
Both were woven with the same warp, but different manners of weaving.
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| woven in classic crackle |
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| woven in a no-tabby bird's eye twill |
More details and photos can be viewed by following the links in the photo captions. Now, I'm glad I chose the bright colors because they really add some interest to the bathroom.
Being cotton, I expected quite a bit of shrinkage after wet finishing, but I decided to push that to the max by drying them in the clothes dryer on the hot setting. Ordinarily, I line dry, but on occasion will use my clothes dryer if it's rainy or snowy out.
The shrinkage tightened up the fabric beautifully, so that the bath mats are soft, thick, and cushy. Being unmercerized cotton, they will be nicely absorbent. The fringe suffered most from machine laundering because that pretty much unraveled the yarn.
- yarns: 4-ply crochet cotton (a.k.a. rug filler)
- threading: crackle
- treadling
- #1 in classic crackle
- #2 in no-tabby twill crackle
- sett: 8 e.p.i.
- picks per inch: 9
- width in reed: 19"
- woven width on loom: 17"
- woven width off loom:
- #1 (classic crackle): 16"
- #2 (no-tabby twill crackle): 16.5"
- length on loom: 26" each
- length off loom
- #1 (classic crackle): 23"
- #2 (no-tabby twill crackle): 23.5"
- wet finishing: machine wash in cold water, machine dry on hot
- finished sizes:
- #1 (classic crackle): 15" x 21.5"
- #2 (no-tabby twill crackle): 15.5" x 22"
- It appears that the different crackle manners of weaving have different draw-in and take-up.
- The extra heddles on the shafts need to be removed when I'm weaving wider projects. I found quite a bit of lint under the loom when I was done and I suspect it was from the yarn rubbing on those unused heddles.
- Could also be because from using a snug size reed.
- Because of the fringe yarn unraveling, I will probably hem future bath mats.
- I somehow managed to skip a treadling block in the first bath mat. This isn't as noticeable as I thought it would be, but if you look closely you can see that the stair step pattern of the brown rectangles is interrupted in about the middle of the mat.
- None of these things matter much for personal use, but it's all good to know for when I want to weave bath mats for someone else.
4 comments:
These are splendid Leigh! And they really do brighten up the room.
Thanks, TB! I really like that too. I didn't realize how bland the bathroom looked until I put that bath mat down to take a picture.
They are lovely and sure to bring a smile to your face every time you see them!
Cotton, especially unmercerized always makes a LOT of lint, no matter what.
Valerie, I really do like them. :) And that makes sense about the cotton. I do have a lot of this particular yarn, a large tote's worth, all given to me when I bought my first loom. I need to use it more.
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