sunburst towels

The idea for my latest towels came from a picture I had seen on the internet. There was no mention of what the draft was, or where it could be found, but I was struck by its design and colours (purple, teal and gold).

My best resource was The Weaver’s Book of 8-Shaft Patterns edited by Carol Strickler. Flipping through the pages I came across what seemed closest to the picture I had seen, #678, a colour-&-weave-effect “houndstooth” huck.

Looking at the colours I had available, I decided on Red, Orange and Yellow, all organic cotton from Venne.

Next was to decide width, sett and length, allowing for shrinkage. I decided on a width of 20″ on the loom and a sett of 20 epi. There are 24 ends in the pattern which I repeated 17 times, plus an additional six (to balance out the pattern) for a total of 414 ends plus two floating selvedges. I wound a warp of just over four yards, and wove 32 repeats of the pattern, plus 1″ each end for the hem for each towel, and ended up with four towels. After washing and hemming, the towels measured 17″ wide, three measured 27″ in length, one measured 25″.

The most challenging part of this project was managing the three colours (three shuttles) all the way through, and carrying the yarn up the in the selvedge, it was a slow weave. I wasn’t sure I wanted to weave this again, but now looking at the completed towels, well maybe.