Back in the summertime, I made dishtowels in yellow and rust using a profile draft. As you probably recall, I set the epi way too high and the towels ended up really stretched out at first.
I ended up remedying the problem by cutting the summer and winter rotation in half. So instead of 1a-2b-2a-1b, it was 1a-2b. It was a little disappointed because it wasn't authentic. It was missing some of the cool features that summer and winter weave offers.
The towels are very beautiful, don't get me wrong. They will make lovely gifts and they are of wonderful materials. But I wanted to revisit this project and find out what went wrong and maybe try it again.
Winter side:
Summer side:
After doing some self-studying on summer and winter, I realized my mistake was simply having the epi set too high. I don't know what I was thinking, but for some reason I set the epi at 30, which would be perfect to make a twill with my 12/2 cotton. What I needed to do instead is set the epi at 20. This also allows me to change my reed to a #10 and free up my #15 reed for another project!
I decided to try this out with just a small sample on my loom. I measured out 160 pink threads at 2 yards on my warp board. It didn't take very long, nor did it take long to thread them in the reed or the heddles! It was actually so fast that it's tempting to do more sampling on my loom in the future. I usually try to avoid sampling, and that is why I tend to run into these problems every now and then. I think I will reconsider this issue in the future, even though I have been pretty lucky so far.
I used 12/2 cotton for both the warp and the weft. And I used one of the unusual treadling repeats of 1a-2b-2a-1b. I like this one a lot!!
I also made a sample using purple as the pattern thread.
It turned out so girly! I am sending it to Brian's grandma to use as a very small table runner.
I also tried treadling the original way of 1a-2b-1a-2b. I do like it, but my favorite is the other treadling because of the pretty XOXO pattern.
What I really want to do with this summer and winter weaving, is make a checkerboard out of this profile draft I created for my 4 nephews and 1 niece! I want to make it a travel set, with maybe a little bag to fold it up and put it in. I was even thinking of Velcro pieces so you could stop right in the middle of a game. I am planning on making it nice a big, like the whole width of my loom. The pieces will be crochet circles, even though I'm not really fond of crochet, nor am I really that good at it. And the best part about all of this, I could choose whatever colors I wanted! Here is the profile draft. Each 1 square really represents 3 repeats of summer and winter, or 12 threads total. So this draft would be 480 threads, and at 20 epi it would weave up to be 24", just perfect!
I know I can't make it in time for birthdays this year, but maybe for Christmas?
It's another thing on my long to-do list!