Have you ever picked up an issue of Handwoven Magazine or looked at a photo of a woven item and thought, “I’d never weave that.” I remember receiving the May/June 2019 issue of Handwoven and looking at the cover photo of these dotted hand towels (Circles and Checks Towels in Turned Taquete’ by Susan Poague) and thinking just that. It wasn’t because they weren’t cool looking, it was only because of the circles. I’m just a little (maybe a lot) intimidated by patterns with strong shapes. My beat is not very consistent and most of the time I can get away with it, but with circles- they’re not going to be forgiving. I was convinced I would either get long vertical oblongs or swished circles. Likely, I’d get both in the same towel.
The Weaving Guild Challenge
I belong to a weaving guild in my area. I love my weaving guild! We have so many talented members who are more than willing to share their talents. One of the other benefits of the guild is that we also challenge each other. In fact, every three months or so, we have a guild challenge and our most recent challenge was to create art inspired by the children’s book “The Dot”.
When presented with the challenge at the guild meeting, my thoughts right away went to the cover of the 2019 Handwoven Magazine and I knew right away I’d be weaving that draft. Oh- those circles, though.
Interpreting the “The Dot”
So I had my draft and now it was time to choose colors. I wanted to use the colors of the picture on the cover of the book for inspiration. Not only did I want to use the colors I wanted to try to emulate the movement of the colors from the lighter yellow in the center to the reds on the edges. One more thing- I decided to weave placemats instead of towels.
Turned Taquete’
I wasn’t too familiar with turned taquete’ so I did some sampling first to see what colors would work best and how they interacted with each other. Turned taquete is similar to summer/winter where you get one color on top and the other color on the bottom. As you can see from my placemat, the circles on the top of the placemat have solid colored dots of oranges and reds with the light melon color in between making those squiggle lines and on the backside, it’s reversed. All the circles are the light melon color and the squiggles are the various colors of red and oranges. So, how do you get this effect? Well, the threading for turned taquete’ is alternating ends of Light/Dark (or any two colors). If you want your circles to really pop, you have two choose two colors that contrast greatly. If you want more subtle circles, the colors can be of similar value. I wanted my colors to go from yellow/more subtle in the center to really pop at the edges. I decided to use melon as what I call my base color and then change colors as I went along the placemat. So, my bands were red wine(8264)/melon, brick (4270)/melon, rust (1316)/melon, rust/melon, pumpkin (8265)/melon, pumpkin/melon, gold (1418)/melon, gold (1418)/melon, gold (1418)/melon, and then the reverse from pumpkin/melon.
Here’s a picture of my project on the loom. I have to say I wove this project in the dead of winter when we were having an unusual cold spell. It was so nice to have a taste of summer.
Project Specs
The goal size for my placemats were 13 1/2″ high and and 17 1/4″ in length. So I gave it my best guess as to how much pull in and shrinkage I may have. I used 8/2 cotton sett at 24 epi. My project was 16 1/4″ in the reed and, with pull in, the project measured 15 1/4″. So that’s a full inch of pull in alone. Not including the hem, I wove 20 1/4 inches under tension.
I wanted to play a bit with colors for the weft so I alternated with the colors I used in the warp. This really changed the feel of each placemat. Not sure I have a favorite, but here are some pictures.
I really like my placemats to be different, but coordinated and changing weft colors does the trick. They look really good as a set, but if I was to replicate just one for placemats, it would be the pumpkin weft.
After washing, my placemats turned out to be 13 1/2 inches high- nailed it! but only 16 1/4″ in length. They work, of course, but they are a little shorter than what I prefer. Next time, I’ll weave 21 1/2 inches (not including the hem) under tension.
Bonus Project
I had warp left after weaving the placemats so I decided to weave a dish towel. The project specs in the Handwoven Magazine had weaving dish towels as 24 epi. I thought this was a little too stiff for my liking so it was the sett I used for placemats and then I opened the sett to 20 epi for the dish towel. I dropped a few color bands so that my project was still 16 1/2″ in the reed (15 1/4″ with pull in). I wove 29 inches under tension (27 1/2″ off the loom). After washing, the towel measure 24 inches in length. Again, this was a bit shorter than I like, but it works. Next time I’ll go for around 32 inches woven on the loom.
Learning for Next Time
I just started taking specs on my projects and calculating pull in and shrinkage. This has helped a lot and I’m finding what my preferences are in terms of sett and width/length for specific projects. I think that when I weave on my Mac I tend to have more tension on the warp than the average weaver so this would account of losing more length in the finished fabric than what would be typical. I also have to take this into account when weaving. So, although I was very careful in measuring my ppi to match the warp (24 epi/ppi), my circles were a bit squished. Just a little bit. At least they were consistently squished :). Can’t wait to share my project at the next guild meeting!
