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Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Some Ideas for the Next Towel Warp

I've been working out some border designs for the pink towel series. The body of the towel will be a 2/2 broken twill. Here are a few of the borders, starting with my interpretation of the pink ribbon shape:



Next, we have a sand dollar shell, hearts, butterflies (these should show up much better than the 20-end-wide version), and a fleur de lis:









There are a couple of websites that show traditional Japanese family crest designs, many of which are symmetrical, thus being suitable for a point threading. The first is a (simplified) ginko leaf design, then a flower called kikyo, and another flower that ends up looking more like a sort of pinwheel. (If you google "Japanese crest" you'll find several sites.)







Because of the point threading, the 1/3 and 3/1 broken twill have some anomalies at the points, which required a little creative twiddling to prevent overlong floats while still maintaining some resemblance to a broken twill.

Also, because the borders should appear in the same orientation to the hem on both ends of the towel, I will create upside-down versions that have a selvedge that continues nicely from the first border through the towel body and on into the second border.

All of them, by the way, were begun in Photoshop using Woven Pixel techniques. I drew (or imported) black and white designs, filled them with warp-faced (for the black areas) and weft-faced (for the white areas) broken twill, then imported into WeaveIt using the Fabric Analysis function under the Tools menu.

5 comments:

Sherrie said...

Greetings,
I have been following your blog and have been fascinated with the patterning. I have done 4 harness weaving and bought an eight harness table loom to experiment. Your work inspires me to want to go even further. How did you start and where did you learn how to do some of these wonderful things.
Sherrie

Life Looms Large said...

These are cool designs! How many harnesses for them??

Sue

Sandra Rude said...

Glad you like 'em, Sue! My loom has 24 shafts, and I usually allocate 4 for selvedges, leaving 20 for the design.

Sherrie, your question is difficult to answer in a comment. I'll try to write the complete answer as a post sometime soon. Stay tuned! In the meantime, the best quick response is "Don't ever be afraid to try something new. It's only yarn, right?"

-- Sandra

neki desu said...

great designs!
and you're absolutely right, it's only yarn.
neki desu

Pat said...

I have been looking for a Fleur de Lis pattern for a 4 shaft /6treadke loom. Were you able to do a draft for the one you show? If so is it available?
Thanks,
Pat