Twisp of Fate

I am up to my 4th warp for the doubleweave check towels, and the current one will be the last for now.  Each one has come out quite differently, and it hasn’t been boring!  I just need to move on to a new project on Kingston.

So, to recap, the weave structure is a mixture of plain weave and doubleweave, the latter creating little thick checks throughout the fabric.  The warp alternates 16/2 cotton for the plain weave stripes, and 8/2 cotton for the doubleweave stripes.  When I am weaving plain weave, the weft is 16/2.  When I am weaving doubleweave, the weft is 8/2 and it weaves as plain weave in the 16/2 warp stripes.  Clear as mud?  You have to be a weaver…..

The first set used a natural 8/2 cotton and a periwinkle 16/2 cotton for the warp.  I played around with changing the colors of the 16/2 cotton for the weft, but only used the natural 8/2 for doubleweave weft.  These are all 6 towels from this warp:

Set 1 – doubleweave check towels

The second set used a light gray marled 8/2 cotton and and black/green marled 16/2 cotton for the warp.  Again I used the same 8/2 cotton throughout for weft, but played around with different colors of 16/2 cotton for the wefts.  I put on 9 yards this time, and got 9 towels (some colors were duplicated, so the picture shows the 5 variations).

Set 2 – doubleweave check towels

closeup of towel with red 16/2 weft

For the third set, I decided to try stripes of four different colors of 8/2 for the warp, with a single color of 16/2, which was a nice gray/blue/green variegated cotton that served as a basis for the other color choices.

It wasn’t until I started winding and beaming a 12-yard warp that I realized these are kind of “Seattle Seahawks” colors!

Seahawks warp all beamed on

This time I played around with changing the colors in the weft for both yarns, the 4 colors of the 8/2 cotton and some other colors of 16/2 that seemed to work with the overall color scheme.

green 16/2 with gray 8/2

I finished up 12 of these last week, and only a few were duplicates.  Here are four of the variations:

Four of the color variations

Because all of the above towels had single colors of 8/2 cotton in the doubleweave areas of the warp, they look the same on both sides.  That is, both the top and bottom layers of the doubleweave checks are the same when woven.

Yesterday I finished putting on the 4th warp.  This time I alternated 2 colors in the doubleweave areas of the warp so I can weave towels that look different on each side.  Those colors are “Madder Brown” and “Shale” 8/2 from WEBS.  The 16/2 is a khaki color.  I wove the first towel last night, using Madder Brown when weaving the top layer, and Shale when weaving the bottom layer.  I also need a third shuttle for the 16/2 cotton, so it is a little slow going managing 3 shuttles, and figuring out how to run the yarns up the selvage neatly.

But as you can see, it is working.   Doubleweave is truly magical!

Two-color doubleweave underway