Towels – Jean Elizabeth Studio

Splice, Splice, Baby….

Posted on November 12, 2019October 4, 2021 by Jean

A handwoven towel wrapped around a bottle of great wine would be an awesome gift to give to a hostess or friend!

The Christmas towels in the last post sold out before I even finished weaving them, so I tied on another warp of them. A very long warp of 26-ish yards this time. Now those are selling fast, so if you’d like to pre-order please reach out. I quickly learned that was going to be a weaving issue, so I changed to just a plaid band on each end of each towel. And then, of course, I had to revert to just playing with Color and Weave because it’s what I love.

For my weaving friends… The Christmas Towels started out as an all-over plaid design. Oh, how naive I was. It didn’t take me long to realize that was going to be a problem. You can not make that many color changes, tucking in the ends as you normally would, without your fell line getting all out of whack. An occasional tucked in end, where it doubles the thread at the end of a bobbin or a color change here and there, is not a problem. If you are changing colors as often as you do in a plaid and just tuck in the ends, you are adding a lot of extra doubled threads to your selvedges, but the center of the cloth stays in single threads in each shed. That doesn’t add up and you will quickly start noticing that your fell line is curving up on the selvedges. Of course, if you’re weaving yardage where the selvedges don’t matter, you can just leave the ends at the color changes hanging out to clip off after wet finishing. If you’re working on a plaid in wool, you can do the same because the wool will somewhat felt together.

In a towel though, you have to do something about those ends to keep the integrity of your cloth. Unfortunately, that something is splicing and it takes a great deal of time. It suddenly makes the sale of a towel with an all-over plaid just not worth it. I am working on a custom 70″ table cloth. I can’t just have one band of plaid on each end on that much of a length of fabric. It wouldn’t be proportioned right. I need to do several bands of the plaid on each end, so I learned to splice. I’m getting quicker at it, but a band of plaid takes me about twice as long to weave, but I do love the effect. Here’s how I do it (Click on pic to make it larger):

End clipped and pulled back out of about an inch of it’s shed

Edited to add: I shared my info on the Rav Warped Weavers thread and a kind soul told me about a method for two pick stripes, like the gold stripe in my plaid border. Instead of having two splices on the selvedge (which end up on the same side), you can achieve one splice in the center portion of of the towel (doesn’t have to be dead center). I threw the first pick leaving tails long enough on either side to meet in the middle. I then changed sheds, layed the weft ends in by hand and then pulled them back out to separate the plies and placed them back in the shed on top of each other. Worked like a charm and will keep extra bulk off the selvedge. I think with practice it’ll also be a little quicker. Funnily enough… I learned this once before… It’s in Janet Dawson’s Floor Loom Weaving class on Craftsy (now Blueprint). I purchased it in June 2013. It’s an excellent class for beginners and maybe this experienced weaver needs to go back and rewatch. lol Here’s how I did the 2 pick splice pictured above:

If you are still here and would like the wif file for the towels, send me an email and I’ll send it to you. WordPress won’t allow me to add the file here. If you don’t want to wait for the .wif it’s plain weave, so that’s simple enough. The color order is:

Christmas Plaid Warp 2019 G=Green R=Red = O=Gold (Oro) W=White

19G / 4R / 2O / 4R

4G / 2W – 2G 4x / 2G / 4R / 2O / 4R / 22G / 4R / 2O / 4R

4G / 2W – 2G 4x / 2G / 4R / 2O / 4R / 19G

Towels, Weaving, Weaving Tips

I can see clearly now…

Posted on October 17, 2019October 4, 2021 by Jean

I finished weaving the towels I started in the last post. They are gorgeous. I am totally digging this whole boucle thing. It adds a lot of beautiful texture and heft to the towels without making them overly heavy. I should be taking them off the loom today and getting them hemmed this weekend. I’m just weaving up the last bits of old warps that I’d tied onto. There’s a lot of memories as I advance the warp.

For my weaving friends:

I love this lighting that I added to my Glimakra and Toika looms a few years ago. Fantastic light, zero heat, inexpensive and they are still putting out plenty of light. I bought a piece of corner trim from the hardware store and a couple of L brackets. The lights are 1/4″ sticky backed tape and I ran them down the length of the trim and then gave a soft twist like a ribbon to run it back the other way. This way I had two rows of lights. I used command strips to attach the L brackets to the loom and to attach the trim with the lights to the L brackets. It gives off fantastic light and you can’t get much cheaper. The best part is that it looks like a part of the loom. I’m sure on other looms you can just stick the lights to a part of the castle. This is the light set I used: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MHLIFO8

With this splitter I now have the strip on the countermarch and the doubled one on the trim across the front connected together. Perfection. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00G6G5DJ0

Here’s a video I shot when I first put them on the Toika.

I have since added an on/off switch so I don’t have to plug/unplug them. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01FT4RBBM/ref

Towels, Weaving, Weaving Tips

Catching Up

Posted on October 7, 2019October 4, 2021 by Jean

A great first week for the shop! So much so, I need to get busy to get stock back up. I cut the custom Three Sisters Scarves off the Baby Wolf, but there is still another scarf or cowl worth of warp to weave off there. Just need to tie back onto the front rod and get going. Here’s the glamour shots of the commissioned Three Sisters Scarves:

I wound this gorgeous warp that I’m calling, “Golden Harvest” in my favorite “winging it” Color and Weave. The first two towels were woven in teal with some orange stripes on each end and the second two are brown on the ends with orange and brown stripes in the center. I can’t tell you the joy it gives me to weave these towels. I kind of get in a rut with the 2×2 or 4×4 stripes in the weft, but I just love weaving them. They are relaxing to weave and end up being so beautiful in the end. I honestly don’t think I can go wrong no matter what color I choose for the weft.

I’m still working on the dornick twill warp on the Glimakra. I’ve woven some yardage with a linen blend yarn that will be suitable for pillows or tote bags. I got bored with that so am weaving a few more towels like I did on the last warp that I tied this one on to. They are simple weaving, but have that farmhouse looks that’s so popular right now.

For the Weavers out there, I wanted to point out a little tip that’s helpful to me. When I’m doing hems on towels, I like to either use up leftover bobbins or I’ll do a different pattern like in the twill above. You’ll notice it’s a point twill treadling at the bottom part of the photo. That’s my hem. It makes it very easy when pressing the hems before sewing to see what’s what. In my color and weave towels like below, the different colored hems add interest and make it very clear when the fold line is for the hem. It’s a nice way to use up odds and ends of bobbins as long as I have enough for each end.

Another little tip is when I’m hand-hemming as I am with this custom table runner, I use Burt’s Bees lip balm to condition my thread. I always have a tube in my little hemming box and it works well. I just place the thread on top of the balm with my thumb lightly on top of the thread. Then I pull the thread through a couple of times and it’s nicely conditioned. If I don’t do this I get snarls and knots all through it.

Burt’s Bees Lip Balm makes a great thread conditioner.

Towels, Weaving, Weaving Tips

Naughty Knots

Posted on September 20, 2019October 5, 2021 by Jean

I took eight autumnal color and weave towels off the Liisa loom last night. They are amazing and will be in the shop when it opens. The warp is cottolin (50/50 linen/cotton) and the weft is cotton bouclé. The bouclé adds beautiful texture and absorbency. The colors are so rich and make me think how beautiful they would be lining a basket of bread on the Thanksgiving table. I found the perfect band in my basket of handwoven inkle bands for the hanging tabs, a little extra somethin’ that I like to add to my towels.

When I’m winding a warp there are knots in the thread sometimes. If I come to them near an end of the warp, I cut the threads (all of them) and pull the knot past the cut end, then re-tie as if I was tying a new color into the warp. If I come to the knot in the middle of the warp, well… that’s a whole other story. I tried pooling all the threads on the floor once and getting the knot out … let’s just say it was a mess. I leave them now. They are MUCH easier to fix on the loom.

There are a zillion ways to do this, but this is the way I do it most of the time. I watch for the knots as I advance my warp. That’s easy to do on the Glimakra and the Toika, because I actually have to be at the back of the loom to release the brake. I “time” it so that I can fix the knot in between towels (or whatever the project is). In this case, the knot was in front of the reed when it was time to fix it. I cut the thread at the knot and tie on a new end from the yarn source.

I leave the tube at the front of the loom and pull the thread back through the reed and heddle towards the back of the loom. I make it long enough so there is plenty of slack. I go back to the front of the loom and cut the thread off the tube and tie a knot right at the fell line. Remember… this is between towels, so the new knot won’t show in the finished product.

Then I go to the back of the loom, gather up the excess and clamp it in a pair of hemostats to hang off the back of the loom. The hemostat adds the perfect weight for tension and holds the threads together well.

You can see that I add a lot of thread, so it’s hanging almost to the floor. It has to be hanging over the back beam so it can keep the tension on the thread with the weight.

Tee pin used to anchor thread at fell line

I keep an eye on it and as soon as the original warp thread is long enough to make it to the fell line in a new towel, I remove the hemostat, pull the thread back through to the front, tie at the fell line between projects, making sure the tension is about the same as the rest of the warp and then I’m ready to go. This is one of those things that takes much longer to explain it than it does to do it. I’d say it’s maybe a couple of minutes total. Obviously, this only works if you’re in between projects on the loom. If a thread breaks in the middle of a project, instead of tying at the fell line, I place a T pin parallel to the fell line and wrap the old and new threads around that.

A treasure basket of bands. I love to add a hanging tab to the hems of my towels and there’s almost always the perfect one waiting for me in this basket.

Towels, Weaving

Just Go With It

Posted on March 10, 2009October 4, 2021 by Jean

I finally had time to finish threading the loom for the towels.

Before I started weaving I noticed that I’d gotten three threads in one reed slot instead of two. I thought, “Heck with it. This is just to get used to the feel and learn. It won’t make much of a difference.” See the dark line that runs up the fabric. And then I noticed that I had a threading mistake. You can see it in the column of pattern that ends right in the center of the photo. Dang it all. That’s okay. I’ll have something to progress from. I still have my first handspun skein and I’ll hold on to these towels the same way.

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