I’ve been weaving merrily away on my cotton towels, very pleased with how smoothly this project has been going. Just like with the Saori bag, I’m using a marked ribbon pinned at the fabric’s edge to measure my progress.
For some reason it wasn’t until I switched from worsted yarn to the #10 crochet thread for the thinner fabric of the first towel’s hem that I thought to check the width and find how much draw-in I had. That’s the natural pulling in of the selvedges that happens during weaving.
Fourteen Inches!??! From 17 all the way down to 14? No way.
So I checked the warp’s width right at the heddle where there wouldn’t be any draw-in. Fifteen.
O.K. So one inch of draw-in, from fifteen down to fourteen is believable, not great, but believable. But can anyone tell me why in the world I warped for only Fifteen inches instead of the Seventeen I’d intended? ?
Apparently, even though I had made a lovely chart which showed how many threads to warp for each stripe and which of the three warping pegs to put them on, I skipped a one inch wide group of cream strands that should have gone at the end of peg 1 and another group meant for the beginning of peg 3. Arrrgh!
HA! Just looking at this photo I took of the finished warp I can see that there are fewer threads on the outer two pegs than on the middle one!
My only excuse – this was my first time to split a warp between three pegs. Why did using three pegs keep me from reading my chart correctly? Well. . . that I don’t know. Sigh. If only I’d thought to double-check the width before I began to wind the warp on the loom’s back beam, I could have added more strands to both edges. Sure, my stripes would have ended up further in from the edge, but I would have full-sized towels.
Oh. Well. Maybe I’m weaving tiny dishtowels for drying tiny dishes. lol. Or maybe they’re meant to be dainty fingertip towels.
The good news – I have plenty of yarn! Towel one only used 2 ounces of the worsted so after towel two I should still have about 8 ounces left, plenty for another set, a full-width set!! I have plenty of crochet cotton for the warp, the warp whose number of strands I will check and double check! lol.
Off I go to finish Tiny Towel number two.
alottastitches 
ahh yes, the best laid plans etc. I think fingertip towels may be the answer 🙂
100% cotton towels – they’re sure to be good for drying something: dishes, tiny dishes, fingertips, etc. lol.
I’m telling myself that with a little practice warping will become as easy as making the beginning chain for my next ripple.
Sew them into bags? A crochet hook roll? Give them crochet edging? You will come up with something that saves this project.
I’ll probably just use them as towels. 🙂