November/December 2023
November/December 2023
Three new weaving patterns to end the year.
In this newsletter you’ll find:
New Pattern: Basic Twill Towels
Weave Quarterly: a two-for-one pattern!
New Pattern: Basic Twill Towels
I feel like I have said this a million times, but it’s true: I learned how to weave and developed my preferences and skills by making tea towels. A LOT of them! Eventually I started selling them at (the now sadly closed) Likely General in Toronto, and through all of this making and experimentation I learned that yes, I really did like weaving, perhaps more than anything else…
So here’s a new towel pattern that is handy for new and experienced weavers to explore, play, and hopefully learn from.
The Basic Twill Towels will introduce new 4 shaft weavers to skills like: winding warps with multiple colours, threading two different types of twill, changing weft colours, and using different treadlings. I hope that experienced weavers will enjoy the creative suggestions this pattern includes through three pages of variations and four extra treadling drafts. I’ve also come up with several alternate colourways and included information on substituting the pattern yarn with 2/8 Cottolin or Cotton.
The Basic Twill Towels (which can be either kitchen or hand towels — your choice!) are fast to weave and can be patterned as complex or straightforward as you’d like. The warp length suggestion is for four towels, which I always feel is a perfect number: one for keeping, three for giving away as gifts. I hope that with the holiday season coming up you may need to squeeze one last project on the loom and that you’ll consider trying the Basic Twill Towels. Click here to get the digital PDF pattern.
Weave Quarterly: Halftones
My last Weave Quarterly subscription box with Gist is coming out today, December 1st, and it’s a big one: you get two patterns, not one!
The Ray Towel or Ray Face Towels use Gist’s new Beam 8/2 Organic Cotton, and Beam 3/2 Organic Cotton. Out of all three of my subscription box projects it’s the most “simple” and “traditional” — but it’s also a classic, I hope!
If you’re a weaver, you may remember the article I wrote about overshot weaving for the Gist blog and the three samples I wove for it. We got SO much feedback about these samples; everyone wanted the pattern! So here it finally is, and in several different permutations too: you can weave a straight ray, small or big zig zags, or come up with your own variation of the treadling and threading blocks — it’s up to you!
There are two patterns in this final release from Halftones and with the materials in your subscription you can weave one of them. The body towel requires at least 36” of weaving width, but the face towels can be made a 20-24” wide loom. The face towels weave up quickly and make nice gifts, and are a good way of exploring all those treadling options. The towel is a much larger project, and while it takes a lot of time to weave, it feels and hangs so nicely from my towel rack — I can’t wait to have the sample back to use.
The bonus content included with this box is an 8 page primer on how to take photographs of your weaving with a smart phone — I know this is something that intimidates people so I hope this intro lesson will help you feel more confident in sharing your projects online or with friends.
There’s still time to sign up for Halftones on the Gist Yarn website; click here to learn more about the program. This is the third, and final, project for my subscription box series. Learn more about project 1, the Seed Pod Towels, here, and project 2, the Daisy Chain Scarf, here.
Amanda