Three Towels Done and Off the Loom

Monday is jury day at the gallery and I wanted to put a few towels in this month, so after I wove the third towel on this warp I cut them off the loom. A few threads were getting a little wonky anyway, so this will let me fix the tension on them. Here’s the third towel on the loom:

(Should have trimmed the loose thread before taking the picture). This is similar to the last towel I showed and I actually designed this one first and then thought it was a little too busy so I took out some of the spots. I like the sparser, green one better, but this is ok. Again, this one used 10/2 perle cotton for the weft. Here is the other side as I was cutting it off:

I called this a satin block weave, but it’s I’m not sure that’s a good description. Satin has warp floats and sateen has weft floats. The reverse side of any satin cloth is sateen and when both appear on the same side of the cloth it is called damask. On these last two towels, the side that was up on the loom (the side with the colored spots) has a mostly satin background and the spots are a single, somewhat altered, block of sateen.

Now, my least favorite part of weaving – I need to use the dreaded sewing machine to zig-zag the hem ends, then wash the towels and cut them apart and hand hem them. The sewing machine used to hate me although, over time, we have come to a sort of grudging peace. I don’t mind hemming so much although it is time consuming. The gallery would accept machine-hemmed items but I like them better when they’re done by hand, so I just do it.