First Set of Napkins Hemmed

Well, they didn't hem themselves, either, but the first set is all ready to be sent to the recipient.

On the theory that if you're going to go to the trouble of hand-weaving napkins you shouldn't do machine-stitched hems, these have been hand-stitched. Luckily, in a former life I sewed a lot of my own clothes, so a hand blind stitch goes pretty fast. Not as fast as the machine, but then my machine can't do a true blind hem stitch.

Here are some images of the first set. The first shot was scanned at high resolution and then cropped way down, so you can see the degree of deflection of threads that occurs when a densely sett 3-color echo weave is wet-finished and pressed. The three warps, although not completely independent layers, still push and shove during finishing and sometimes the layers that want to be in front really bend to get there. Look at the light threads close to the base of the feather, and higher near the tip, and you can see the light warp actually crossing over the peach warp in places. (Click the image to open a larger version first.)



The next shot shows the four napkins, from left: grey weft, gold weft, rust weft, and brown weft. If you scroll down a couple of posts, you'll find pictures of the coned yarns before weaving.



This warp was 19 inches in the reed, and shrank to 16 after finishing. I thought mercerized cotton would never shrink almost 16%. I had calculated 10%. Hah! Luckily, 16x16 is an accepted size for dinner napkins, so I'm still in the ballpark and don't have to call 'em luncheon napkins!