Farey fraction towels

I'm finally getting around to putting up the post that shows the some of variations on the  Farey Fraction Denominator threading.  Some of them are very busy, one or two show a good solid design and some didn't show the complexity of the threading at all.

These towels are all woven on the same warp using different tie ups and mostly a point treadling.  I used an advancing treadling on one towel.



 This is the most elegant design. The pattern is clear and varies across the warp.

 This towel is the end of the warp.  I used up all of the odds and ends of yarn left on pirns. It was interesting to see how the weft color influenced the design.

 I actually like this towel a lot.  The pattern shows up in both the red and dark purple areas and it seems almost like embroidery. The reverse of the towel (folded back) shows a redder pattern.

 

 This close up shows how the design alters across the warp.  The weft color worked well with the warp; always a surprise which wefts are good and those that are just ho hum!

 

 

 The towel in this photo shows two very different looking faces.

This was a worthwhile exercise in design work even though my original idea of the red stripe design showing up between bars of dark stripes didn't translate the way I imagined it would.  The main feature of the designs are an embroidery like appearance to the cloth.  However, the designs are small and so detailed, that they can seem overly busy. 

Everything But the Kitchen Sink Towels

Did you check out the halvdräll runner in the Nov/Dec 2011 issue of Handwoven?  I've been eyeing the structure for several years after I received a sample in a Complex Weavers exchange several years ago. After I read the article in Handwoven, I decided to try it out, but with a twist or two.  I have lots of little balls of yarn left over from bobbins (I save everything) and cones of yarn with just a bit on them.  I collected oranges, browns, pinks and a few lavenders for warp yarns and set to work to wind a multi - multi color warp.  It took a bit of planning because the halvdräll threading blocks vary between 9 and 10 threads, so I did a whole thread by thread drawdown and expanded the four shaft draft to eight so that I wouldn't have to reload heddles on the first four shafts of my Baby Wolf.

Once I had gotten the warp on the loom and started weaving, I decided that some of my variegated yarns would be terrific thicker wefts - with so many colors in the warp it made them busier and better (IMHO).  I also pulled out my box of little balls of cotton yarn and started using them up, ball by ball.  The weave structure uses a tabby weft in a finer grist followed by a pattern weft with heavier yarns and I found I could use most medium value colors because there were so many colors already present in the warp.

7/23 Here is an addendum to this post.  The original Handwoven magazine had an error in the threading of the draft on the first page  Obviously it worked, because I used it.  An errata post was made later in the magazine and here is a link to the correct wif file.  https://handwovenmagazine.com/library/55988020

One thing  I found after I had threaded my loom was that I needed a straight draw threading at the beginning and the end of the warp so that the pattern wefts looked good at the selvedges and also so that I could do plain weave hems.

While throwing everything into these towels possible, I ran across a very good cookie recipe with the same name - not halvdräll, but Everything But the Kitchen Sink Cookies from Martha Stewart.  Try them, I think you will find they are as tasty as the towels are colorful.

Here is a P.S. to the post.  A weaving friend asked Madelyn van der Hoogt what the meaning of halvdräll was.  Here is her answer

I'm going to tell you this off the top of my head, but I’m pretty sure it captures the gist. Shaft movement in Swedish counterbalance looms is operated by pulleys called dräll pulleys. In some weaves, such as damask and turned twill, all of the shafts in the pulleys operate against each other (I’m not saying this right. Maybe it’s better to say that each block has its own separate shafts, so when you change from one block to the next, you change the operation of both groups of shafts on the pulleys). These are dräll weaves. In halb dräll weaves, the pattern shafts for each block are different, but the tie-down shafts are the same for both blocks. This affects the way the pulley system works; only “half” change their operation from block to block, hence halb dräll.

So, turned twill is a dräll weave. Summer and winter is a halb dräll weave.
Madelyn

Umpteen Colored Towels

I have been planning my next multicolor warp since my last two worked out so well.  I wound a 9 yard towel warp for the Baby Wolf loom and spiced up the stripe sequence a bit.  Each warp stripe was two different colors in a similar value and I used 14 different colors.  The warp was gorgeous and the thought occurred to me that maybe I should quit while I was ahead - photograph it and move on.  But, I wound it on the back beam slowly with a few pesky threads that had to be combed into submission.  My first tie up was the turned taquete draft seen in a previous post.  I picked three to five different colors for the weft.  Some of them had been used in the warp -- some not.  I tried to keep to a medium value.  Dee passed on this tip to me and she learned it from Michelle Whipplinger.  "You can get by with many colors in the warp if you use a medium value weft - of any color".  Seems unlikely, but I was determined to see if I could stretch the limits of this color thing. 

I started out easy with lots of colors that were similar to the warp colors.  Then, I progressed into darker value colors of green and teal.  I brought out some really brash turqoise green and used it.  All those tag ends of cones became depleted and my best color turned out to be a pewter gray/green.  Pretty uninspiring on the cone, but it really made the reds and pinks in the warp pop.

I was having fun with the taquete weave structure, but since the threading was two blocks on an eight shaft loom, I pulled out a couple more tie ups to try. 

The first tie up gives a lovely array of color and weave effects with the two toned warp.  The second tie up has plain weave, a spot weave and two other four shaft structures.  Lots of bang for the buck.

Not every color did work on this warp.  Yellows were yucky, but perhaps a gold would have been OK.  Lighter colored weft yarns weren't all that attractive either. I didn't use too many oranges, but the ones I tried worked pretty well.  There were lots more possibilities, but I ran out of warp at nine towels.   

Turned Taquete on 8 Shafts

I wish I could remember or find the original source of this turned taquete draft so that I could give credit where credit is due. I had it tucked away in my weaving files and had been looking at it for a while thinking that it might be something fun to try. Also in the back of my mind has been using up small amounts of 8/2 and 10/2 cottons and this draft really fills the ticket in that respect.

What a joy it was to watch the complex squares change and morph into four towels and a couple of smaller pieces of yardage.

The real secret to the color symphony, seems to be value. I look at all the colors I want to use in my warp through a quilting tool called a ruby beholder and then combined two colors that were close in value for every stripe.

The next time you are looking to use up some of those pesky cones with not much yarn on them, try this draft. I have plans for a series of wool shawls using the same draft and have all the cones stacked out and ready to wind the warp. I do hope they will be as successful as the towels are.