Jane Stafford - Brad's Warped

The next set was direct from Jane Stafford’s online guild, season 5 Episode 1, Turned Twills. This was the first thing that I completed using all 8 shafts of the loom and I was so excited to see how using these color blocks could produce so many gorgeous effects. This was also the first time that I maxed out my looms warping capabilities. Maybe someone out there could tell me how to get more on, but 14 yards seems to be the maximum warp amount for the Ashford table loom, at least for 8/2 cotton.

So, 14 yards, 12 towels from the instructions, and then about 1.5 yards to play with. I had so much fun with this one that I warped it again (only 4 yards) in different colors to make towels for my SIL in Kansas.

And then the SIL towels…

Between towel sets, I also dabbled with a few of Jane Stafford’s practice pieces from this year which is the lace year. There is just so much that can be done with lace, and she primarily just shows what can be done with 4 shafts. Add 4 more and the possibilities are insane!

For the history books today, The war in Afghanistan is officially over. I have no idea what that means for the region, this country, or the world but we shall see. A major hurricane hit the Louisiana coast yesterday, exactly 16 years to the day as Katrina. New Orleans is entirely without power and it may be weeks before they get things back on for the majority of people.

And finally, the number of people with Covid continues to grow because of all of the FUCKING ASSHOLES who refuse to get vaccinated and wear masks. At this point, they deserve what they get. Yes, that is harsh but if they are that fucking stupid…

The next post will be looking at my second to last summer project and it was so much fun. It is the Turned Taquete towel weave from the May/June issue of Handwoven Magazine.

Now that you know a little bit of history, let’s get down to what I have done with this loom this past summer.

I consider Winter and Spring of 2021 to be my “practice time” and seriously got down to putting things I had practiced and learned into something useful.

Towels are the obvious easy start since they are so useful, who doesn’t need a kitchen towel…

I started with Towels for Eric. We have tons of Fiestaware and he wanted towels to coordinate. These were a simple twill using 4 shafts and as you can see, not planned out too much as far as the stripes and twill placement… live and learn.

For the next project, I wanted to pull in some color. I had completed some gamps from Jane Stafford’s online guild and wanted to use a bit of what I learned there. The second set of towels were for my mom. These were just simple plain weave using color gradient as the feature. I used various blues, purples, and pinks to create subtle color shading. I also threw in twining a pink and green cottolin as a weft in one towel and was pleasantly surprised by the “shimmer” effect that it gave the towel. Unfortunately, I do not have any pictures of the finished towels… That will be rectified for all future towels 🙂