White Linen Table Runners on Eight Shafts

After adding the new videos to our Etsy table runner listings, we have sold 4 table runners in the last month!  We are down to just 7 listings for table runners so I started a new project with white linen from Belgium.  I love the view from the back of the loom where you can see the pattern in the heddles.

I like a neutral table linen, so for the weft I tried a lovely warm beige cottolin.  It is a lovely colour but it brought out the yellow tones in the white linen.  It just made the warp look dirty so onto the next choice.

My next pick for weft is a faded denim blue cottolin which looks fantastic with the warp.  The linen looks white and crisp against the blue cottolin.

The pattern that I picked for the table linens is a classic one for us that I have woven many times and still enjoy weaving.  I last wove this pattern in January of last year and both of those table runners quickly sold.  There will probably always be at least one table linen in the shop with this pattern, it is just that pretty!  It is a snowflake twill with a strong graphic punch of the large X’s.

The faded denim blue cottolin runner quickly wove up and yesterday I finished it.  Next I had to pick a new weft for the second and last table runner for this warp.  I looked through the stash yarn book at all the different yarn choices and colours but this large cone of blue cotton spoke to me!  You may remember it from the wool throw blog post where it had been mislabeled as wool at a yarn sale but a burn test showed that it is cotton.

I am quite surprized by the difference between the two blues.  The cobalt blue of the new warp overwhelms the denim blue cottolin almost making it seem to be grey.  It could also be because of the grey and dreary light we have right now.

I wove a single repeat just so I can see what the new cobalt blue cotton weft is going to look like, and yup it is going to be amazing.

We have three hummingbirds overwintering in the back garden this year.  They are amazingly noisy with their chirping and chasing each other around.  But I caught two of them perching together against the stormy winter sky, staking out the feeder.