Waffle Weave

 

They're done!! The waffle weave handtowels are finished, hemmed, washed and ready to give away. I ended up with 9 of them!

 The predominant color is gold and that yarn was a bit larger than the 8/2 that the rest of them were. I don't know where the cone of gold came from. I had had it awhile and wanted to use it up with the rest of the 8/2 cones so I planned the warp around the gold.
Then I wove some of them with the other colors, chocolate, caribe, olive and shrimp.  Weaving waffle weave isn't hard at all but sure looks impressive once it's done. The threading isn't very complicated so you get into the rhythm of doing that. Then the weaving. Well, the worst part is crawling under the loom to re-tie the treadles so that you just walk them back and forth. It's pretty neat to watch the pattern develop as you go.

 Before I washed them, I serged off a piece of the fabric to show the before and after of waffle weave. Beforehand, it's flat, fairly long floats but not bad, just flat. After washing, the yarns shrink a bit and create the nice little pockets of air. The whole towel becomes really soft and cushy.

Our local weaving guild did a waffle weave challenge and this ended up being my sample for that. I've got to fill out the sheets with samples of before and after washing the fabric.
I'm already thinking of the next combination of yarns to make more towels. I think it's good to have some handtowels in the stash, ready to give away!

So, it's Christmas!! I've made my last grocery list, found a small quilted wallhanging I want to sew today and figured out which warp I need to wind today to put on Nilus now that the placemats are off. That's the first project that needs weaving next. It'll be rugs, an order for one plus some to have to sell.
But, I won't get alot of work done this week. We're staying home but hope to meet with some friends and enjoy the Christmas week.
Until next week, Merry Christmas!!!
Carol