Chocolate and wine towels

My newest set of towels is hot off the loom, and I love them!

This is a design I devised, beginning with picking 3 colors. Now if I'm completely honest with you, when I ordered the yarn, I had a professional's pattern picked out to weave. I ordered, then started in on another set of towels, and then I lost my sticky note where I wrote down what I had decided!  So I just decided to design it myself. 

I initially had planned 3 towels, with a similar design except for alternating colors and different treadling on each towel. However, at the end of my 3 towels, I realized I had a TON of warp length remaining, and discovered that I had calculated for my usual 4 towels, not 3. Well, I just decided it was fate!  Four towels it is. The fourth was gonna be drastically different though...

Towel 1:

Towel 2:

Towel 3:

And the black sheep:

I actually ended up liking the black sheep the best!  I might design a full set of 4 like it.  Weird how stuff works out. 

Here they all are together:

Details:

8/2 unmercerized cotton in natural, chocolate, and wine. 

4 shaft 36" Leclerc Nilus

Undulating twill threading, 4 different treadling sequences. 

I do have to pat myself on the back: my selvedges are looking quite professional.

A learning tidbit:  I found it really helpful with stripes to use a 6" sewing ruler with a slider. I would place it in the middle of the finished fabric, with my desired length  indicated by the slider. As I wove along, beating in each weft pick, I would tap the ruler up to the beater and get a good measurement. This obviously doesn't work on sections larger than 6", but worked great for these towels. 

In the above picture, I would see by my measurement that I should throw one more pick before changing colors.

If you would like my drafts and calculations pages, please contact me.  I'd be happy to share them with you.

This is the last weaving project before our upcoming trip, so more towels will come until after that!  Stay tuned...