Monday, April 11, 2022

Tartan Tea Towels on Four

Last week we received a lovely big box of colour from Maurice Brassard et fils.  Opening the box is such an exciting moment.

Once I get the tubes of cotton out of the box, the ideas for weaving projects seem to pop into my head, so many possibilities.

Before I put the new tubes of cotton away, I take the time to use a Sharpie and colour the top of each of the tubes.  I choose a new colour each cotton order.  This allows me to make sure that I’m using the same dye lot when I weave a project.

Why take the time to colour each tube you well may ask.  The marine blue cottons in the photo below are all the same colour, but from different dye lots.  There is a very noticeable difference in them ,sorry if the photo doesn’t show it well, but trust me they are very, very different!  If put side by side in a weave it would be a disaster.  Yup, learned this the hard way!

Now that the cottons are all here I thought I’d make some plaid tea towels.  Well not just plaid, but tartan tea towels.  This is the warp for the Cunningham Blue (Dance) pattern as found in the Scottish Registry.  I chose this particular pattern as one of my husbands great, greats was a Cunningham, so a perfect place to start. 

And the other part of the pattern.

Now that I have one full pattern repeat done, I’m stoked!  It is so very bold and lovely, I can't wait to see the final tea towels.

The garden here in Comox is really slow to start this year, it has been cold and down island from us actually had SNOW yesterday.  Glad we dodged that weather system.  Here is the lovely Violette odorante 'Sweet Violet' just starting to bloom in the wet garden, it is so charming and smells like heaven!

Monday, April 4, 2022

Tea Towels Redo

The 2/8 cotton finally arrived from Quebec so I can get started on the tea towel commission I received.  I originally wove the tea towels in October and I enjoyed weaving them so I’m excited to redo them (here is the blog post).  


The tea towels have seven different colours in the warp and there are a lot of colour changes making the stripes.  So I pulled the warp in four sections to help keep everything in order.  

The tea towels are lime green with wide ribbons of colour running the length of the warp.  The colours in the ribbons are purple, lilac, pink, periwinkle, turquoise and white.  I know, it sounds busy, but this is really a pretty weave.

The pattern is twill and the weft is navy blue cotton.  The colours of the warp really pop against the navy blue weft.  I wove four tea towels in total, all with the navy blue weft.  

For finishing the tea towels I like to use the sewing machine to stabilize the raw hems before placing the tea towels into the washing machine and dryer.  

I clip the weft ends before the first pressing of the tea towels.  I do another final press once the hems are stitched up.  Sorry for the yellow photo, I had to have the lights on because we are having lots of April showers this week; hopefully they will bring lots of May flowers.

The tea towels are almost done, they just need to be hemmed and I can take some photos for the listing.

Final Garden Photo is an update on the spring bulb lasagna pot.  It is absolutely heaving with ‘Tete a Tete’ miniature daffodils and purple violas.  The tulips are almost ready to bloom in a day to two.  Overall the lasagne planting of the spring bulbs has been successful and the pot has been a lovely addition to the garden.  We have it front and centre on the patio and it makes the back garden pop!