Sometimes I feel like I’m the luckiest person on earth! I am so fortunate to have two of my three children return to live in our hometown. Both of my girls are starting families of their own and we are growing quickly. My new granddaughter, Sayler, is baby number four with another baby due in June. Soon we will have five babies under three. With the two dogs, it’s pure chaos. It’s a good chaos, but it can definitely feel crazy. With all this going on I’m finding it difficult to squeeze in time at the loom, but I was determined to finish this blanket for Sayler before she was born.
Sayler was born in early May so Lizzie requested a light weight, almost gauzy type of blanket for her. I’ve never woven a baby blanket using huck before, but thought this would be a good opportunity to give it a try. These blankets are based on a Jane Stafford Episode “M’s and O’s Goes on a 2nd Date” (with Huck and Color and Weave). This is the first episode in Season 8. In essence, you thread your loom using and M’s and O’s threading sequence (Block A: 12121 43434 12121; Block B: 42424 13131 42424). By changing the tie up, you can weave both huck and m’s and o’s on this same threading. Wonderful, right? Here are the blankets woven on the same warp.
Project Specs
To keep the blanket light weight, I chose to 8/2 cotton. After sampling, I opted to use a sett of 16 epi. This sett gave the blanket a nice drape and kept the “gauzy” feel we were looking for. The blanket had 639 ends (not including the floating selvages) and was 39 1/2 inches in the reed. With pull in, the blanket measured 36 3/4 inches in width off the loom. When I weave baby blankets, I aim to weave the body of the blanket 46-48 inches (varies depending on graphic) under tension. Again, this is for the body only and does not include the hem. Blankets one and two measured 46 inches on the loom with the finished blanket 38 inches in length. The final blanket was 50 inches on the loom and measured 41 inches after washing. For these blankets, as for most of my baby blankets, I weave a 4 inch hem and then turn over about 3/4 of an inch when hemming. The length of the hem is a personal preference and I found that I prefer a heavier hem.
Weaving the Huck Baby Blanket
The image below is the tie up and treadling for huck. The tie up for treadles one and two are set for plain weave and treadles 3 and 4 weave the pattern. I used the Bronson Lace treadling for this blanket so I’m alternating Block A (24242) with Block B (25252) separating each block with treadle one. So… the treadling through the entire blanket was 24242 1 25252 1 24242 1 ….. I was then free to play with color.
One of the aspects of this little blanket that I love are the green accents. For the edges, I threw three pics of the green in the same shed. For the stripes within the blanket I threw two pics in the same shed on the 424 for in Block A. This created these cute little bows. By throwing added pics in the same shed, the green was bulkier giving it a texture. I could have used 8/4 as well for the same effect.
Another feature I experimented with in this blanket was the use of color and weave. I had two color and weave sections in the warp of this project. The first section alternated Dark-Light (DL) using gold and natural. The second color and weave section was also DL alternating Camel (Maurice Brassard 1183) and Natural. For the first color and weave section of the warp I wove the AB block DL for 13 blocks, threw two pics of green in the same shed on treadle one, then AB block LD for nine blocks, then two pics of green in the same shed on treadle one, and then to make it symmetrical 13 of AB DL. Here’s what it looks like on the weaving software.
Weaving the Blanket in M’s and O’s
Weaving a blanket using M’s and O’s was kind of an after thought. My focus was on huck, but I put on a 6 yard warp and had enough to experiment with M’s and O’s. To weave the third blanket, I had to change the tie up. I did not put this into my weaving software as I kind of just played and didn’t put too much thought into the graphic. The tie up for the M’s and O’s can be found in Jane’s Episode 1 of Season 8. With this blanket, most of the blocks were woven with 15 pics throwing two pics in the same shed for pic 1 and pic 15 (for texture). For the green sections, I wove the blocks using 5 pics. I love those little bows!
Here’s a picture of the M’s and O’s blanket from a different persective.
Oh, did I mention I that I wove a coordinating bunny for Sayler? I’ve woven a coordinating teddy bear or bunny for each of my grand babies. I’ve landed on using 16/2 cotton without a stabilizer to weave these animals.
Here’s a picture of our little peanut shortly after birth wrapped in her handwoven baby blanket. Welcome to the world little Sayler. You’ll be weaving soon baby.
