Bird's Eye towelettes

Sometimes you just love something. When I saw those linen/bamboo blends, I knew I must have them, even thought I did not really need them.

Passion for small towels and desire to try something new resulted in an experiment with bird's eye twill from Anne Dixon's The Handweaver's Pattern Directory (pages 72-73).

The idea was to used natural linen for warp and than new yarn and new pattern for each towellete. It was a good idea right until I wound the warp and realised that I did it wrong (again !). Somehow I managed to mess the raddle cross.

I kind of did it but when I tried to spread it over the raddle it was not there.
I beamed it anyway in a massive knot without spreading (clearly understanding that this won't work) and started to weave.

Anyway - Project details:
Yarn: warp - 100% linen
           weft - linen/bamboo (65%/35%)
Warp: 180 ends @ 2.5 m
            10" length in the reed, 18 epi

Towel 1. Page 73, pattern 1.

Everything was kind of OK right until the moment I had to advance the warp... Desaster! My beautiful weaving that gave me so much joy during first couple of inches, "melted" horribly! All wavy and unruly!
I was about to throw everything away and start anew.

But I did not. I unwound the warp again, tied it in small sections and weighted with bottles. Is there anything Coca-Cola cannot do?!

Apart from the fact that it took some time to advance the warp every 10 cm, weaving was a bliss and the project saved.

Towel 2. Page 72, pattern 1. Love the weft colour!

Towel 3. Page 73, pattern 3.

Towel 4. Page 72, pattern 3.

Towel 5. Page 72, pattern 2.

And finaly towel number 6. This is my usual left-over piece. As usual I was not sure that I had enough warp left for a full-sized towel. (I was wrong I had exactly enough.) Since I had only 5 colours of linen/bmboo, for this towel I used some a bit thicker 100% bamboo yarn from my linen towels project.

While weaving and comparing patterns I liked the ones on page 72 more, they were double-sided and looked better at that time, so,  I repeated pattern 1 for this towel. Surprisingly this left-over towel turned out better that all of the above. First, the weft was a bit thicker and looser giving more colour. Second, those patterns seem to look much better in solids, more pronounced.

Off the loom.

Hemmed.

Back and front details. Page 73 patterns have distinctive front and back, page 72 ones are reversible.

And after wet finish. Finished size apr. 28x24 cm.