Project Fancy Pants Complete!

David will be stylin’ in these handwoven houndstooth pants come Oct-April! The fabric is woven with 100% cotton so they are super soft and thick! They are 18-24 mo size for winter weather. I am thinking of making a matching suit coat and bow-tie… since there is plenty of time to plan it all out!  Oh yeah, and I'm also going to sew him a white button up shirt.  It will be the complete handmade outfit!

It will be like being wrapped in soft dishtowels all day long… oooohhh… ahhhh… who wouldn’t want to be wrapped up in soft dishtowels?! I’m a little jealous! I’ll have to make some in my size.

The cool thing is, if I run out of fabric, I can just make some more! Forget Hobby Lobby and the fabric stores... 17 years down the line, I could totally re-make these for his senior prom... because he's going to love them THAT much.

Square Samples

I have been working a lot with squares lately!  I don't know why, but I love squares right now.  They are so predictable, but you can do a lot with them.

Here is one in 3/1 twill.  I was worried about the stability of the fabric and wondered if it would curl with washing, but it didn't!  I will work more with this pattern later!

These squares are done in summer and winter, only because I have an 8-shaft loom.  If I had a 24-shaft loom, I would do them in 3/1 twill so that I could use whatever colors I want to use!  Right now with them woven in summer and winter, I am somewhat limited on my color choices because the colors will mush if I put too many in.  I will still experiment, but I have to be careful with the combinations I come up with.

Fancy Pants

My current project is weaving fabric for new pants for David!

I was going to make them in his next size up, but the fabric is very thick so I might go for the next size after that so it will be wintertime next year (18-24 mo size).  These will be awesome!  I have had a goal to make him hound's tooth pants for months now.  I'm glad to finally sit and do it!

Speaking of hound's tooth, I can now share with you the Christmas gift I made for my sister.  I wove her a blanket in hound's tooth, but I had to weave in with doubleweave because my loom is too small to do it the regular way.

It turned out perfect!  You could hardly see the fold when it was all washed up.  And she loved it!  She loves ANYTHING hound's tooth!

Stocking... check!

David's stocking is complete, and if he were awake, I would set him next to it for a picture!  I'll save it for tomorrow because you never wake a sleeping baby!  :)

The inner liner is handwoven pinwheels made of perle cotton.  It's nice and soft for little hands to go digging into this stocking!

What a fun project!

Finished projects

I finally took the time to finish 3 different projects!  I had to do it over several days during David's naptimes!

The pastel towels are done, and hemmed.  I just turned the edges over on these ones because I don't have any white thread that works well in my serger.  

I ended up using 3 different designs.

 

The blue echo project is also done.  I ended up making 3 baby burp clothes for a friend having a boy in the spring.  

 

I also made 2 gigantic towels out of the zigzags... they are so big, I could probably use one as a blanket for David on our chilly morning walks!  :)

And I turned my first echo weave sample into a handtowel for the bathroom!  It's nice and thick because of the tight epi!

 

Finally done

Towels are all washed and sewn!  Finally, I'm done with these pinkless towels!

I love the way they turned out... each and every one of them!
I like them more now that they are done and not on the loom... sometimes it happens that way.

My friend really wanted the one on the far left, the striped one.  What a good choice!

Off the loom

 I finally cut the towels off the loom.  I'm actually glad to be done with these ones!

What did I do with the edges of the very colorful ones?  Well, I just cut off the threads and left it.  Turn your head away if you must... 

But I figured that there is enough weaving with each color that it will hold together well enough.  And if I'm wrong?  Well, I'm wrong and I'll know for next time!!

Look at the goodie that came in the mail last week!!  I'm so excited to get started!!

The last towel

For this last towel, I decided to go back and do another pinwheel, because it overall was my very favorite design.

This time, instead of changing colors every row, I decided to do groups of colors.  I am doing a few rows of the same light yarn and the same dark yarn, and when it runs out, then I change it.

I like it the best of all! 

The edges are much cleaner and you can still have the fun pinwheel look, but without all those color changes.

This time, it's actually relaxing to do these pinwheels!  I was so tired of the color changes, and I'm still not sure what the best method is to fix the edges of the first 3 towels!

If the color ends somewhere in the row, then that's ok!  I just pick up where I left off and keep going!  I think it looks neat!

Celebrate the stripes

 Forget the weft color changes this time around!

 

It's so nice just to weave with one color!

I like the flow I can get into! 

This is one of my most favorite 4-shaft weaves.  I love this texture!  I discovered it 5 years ago when I first got my loom.  I wove a very small ending piece and I have loved it ever since!  I loved how nicely it washed up, and it's something different.  The texture is always so nice with this one!

I decided to use natural colored weft so that no one color would stand out.  Here is the pattern for 8-shafts, but it's originally a 4-shaft pattern.

These warp stripes make this towel look like so much fun!

These color changes...

... are driving me crazy!  What I really want to do is just weave a one shuttle weave right now!  I am getting tired of stopping to change colors after every 8 treadles.  Ugh!!

However, while I was weaving, here are some other delightful combinations I came up with, not that I'm chomping at the bit to get started on these or anything!  But I am tucking these away for future reference!

#1: red, orange, red, orange, yellow, green, yellow, green, blue, purple, blue, purple:

#2: red, orange, red, orange, yellow, orange, yellow, orange, yellow, green, yellow, green, blue, green, blue, green, blue, purple, blue, purple, red, purple, red, purple

I liked this idea I came up with for the above combinations, so I thought since I was getting tired of the color changes anyway, I would try something like it on this latest towel.  I used several colors in a row before changing them out.  It made for less floats on the sides, AND I could weave through the rest of this one towel so much faster.  Here is what it looks like:

You can hardly tell I cheated on this very last section!  And it got me through it.

I think I might do a one shuttle weave next... and if I run out of warp, that is fine by me!  I'm getting tired of this one anyway!  :)