Years ago, possibly 6 or more, we lived in a beautiful area half way up a hill and opposite a gentleman who used to be in the textile trade. He had a garage full of leftover cones of wool and cotton and offered to let me buy anything I would want! He told me all of the yarn he had was cheap as chips - his chips being a different gauge of cheapness than I was used to.
I ended up with 6 really large cones of cotton. The thing was, it was superfine and although I could see it was wonderful, I felt a little intimidated of what I could create with it and so I'm afraid it has just travelled with me wherever I've gone and other projects have taken precedence. Then someone (thanks Colette) gave me the idea of weaving facecloths and I decided it was time to weave with my stash. A little project, wouldn't take too much time and I could use my little Kromski loom.
Measuring the wraps per inch, it came out at 54 wpi. This would be too fine to use with the heddles so not particularly useable for me on the rigid heddle loom as it was. Plus, the cotton was quite easily snapped, whether this was because of it's age or it's fineness I'm unsure so I had to make a decision on how to use it. It wouldn't be a great choice as a warp thread the way it was.
I decided to chain ply it. This gave me a three plied yarn of 26 wraps per inch. So the 12dpi heddle was the perfect choice. As I was just experimenting, I warped up my 8" Kromski Harp Forte, the cotton now being strong enough to work as warp becasue it was a three plied yarn. I chose a mix of plain weave and a pick up stick pattern
Here's the pattern I chose:
Warp your loom and use your pick up stick to lift 2 threads up 2 down
Weave seven rows of plain weave, leaving a thread four times the width of the loom to use for your hem stitch. I hem stitched over two ends and up two picks as my cloths are small and so I wanted a smaller hem stitch but you can decide on your own pattern for that.
Weave 14 rows of the pattern as follows
Down
Up and Pick Up Stick
Down
Up and Pick Up Stick
Down
Up
I liked the size of the 14 row pattern as I thought the fabric produced would make lovely little face cloths but obviously you can decide whether to go larger. Using a larger loom, cotton could be wonderful for guest towels with the pattern as edging and plain weave throughout (if you like weaving mindlessly while watching the telly like I do). Having a little project, with if not instant gratification then pretty darn quick was brilliant and I've enjoyed making these so much. So if you have any cotton to use up, I'd definitely recommend having a go, especially if you're a cotton virgin, you might be surprised how much you end up loving it.
