Herringbone Twill

Last year, I wove a blanket for my mother, there is a photo of it on the loom at the bottom of this post. The blanket was a birthday gift that I shipped to her in October.  She was thrilled!

At some point, my sister went to visit Mom and noticed the blanket.

When my mother arrived for her annual holiday visit, she mentioned to me how much my sister had liked it.

I was surprised.

As she is bright and perfectly capable of any endeavor, she has never expressed interest in any of my crafts.

Her birthday was in February, but I knew I would not have time to acquire the materials or get it done before then. However, when I spoke to her, I told her I was working on one for her.  She sounded pleased.

That made me happy.

While the warp has been ready for a while, I needed to free up the Macomber. That did not happen until the end of April, and my friend Isabel came over and helped me dress the loom.

Last night, I completed the weaving, hemmed the edges, and washed it.  It was dry this morning and ready for a label and quick photo shoot:

The pattern is an 8-harness Herringbone Twill from a draft I found on Pinterest.

I used several colors of 8/2 Tencel for the warp. There are 596 ends with a sett of  12.  Weaving width was almost 50".

For the weft, I had 2,000 yards of Aran weight knitting wool in a tonal Wedgewood Blue.

I was hoping to get a finished blanket about 45" wide and 72" to 80" long, after hemming.  

However, as I had a finite amount of wool (which was also discontinued), the plan was to simply weave until I ran out of it.

At first, I found a 50 gram ball of 100 yards of wool wove 4 inches of fabric.  20 balls x 4" equaled 80" of woven fabric.

Unfortunately, this particular yarn has a history with me of being grossly underweight. The majority of the balls weighed far less than 50 grams, even with the ball band still on them. 

As I had used this yarn for several sweaters in the past and ALWAYS used more balls than the pattern called for, this was not a complete surprise, just disappointing.

The good news is that I have finally used up all the yarn from this particular company, and I have held fast to my vow to never buy this brand again.

Post-hemming and washing, the finished blanket is 45" x 60.5".  This is fine for a sofa throw.

What is really nice about this blanket is the weight and feel of it. The twill makes a dense, firm fabric compared to the loose, drapey fabric of my mother's blanket.  

When I covered the younger daughter with it last night, she said: "This is nice, Mommy. I want one!"

Coming from a sixteen-year-old, I take that as high praise!

A few words on finishing:  The rainbow fabric from the last post languished for a month after I pulled it from the loom and before I finally decided to cut, hem, wash, and finish it.

I knew how to do it, but after I spent all those hours weaving the fabric, I did not want to mess it up. My procrastination was born of a lack of confidence; however, once I just did it, it was neither difficult nor all that time consuming to do.

Once I cut the blanket from the loom last night, I hesitated to do anything with it, but decided just to finish it off, so that I could send it on Monday.  It took less than half an hour to secure the ends, cut off the waste, press, and hem the ends.

By the way, if you ever have occasion to hem anything, invest a scant few dollars in one of these Clover Press Perfect Hot Rulers:

Never has hemming been so easy and PERFECT!

Next up, I already have a warp prepared for the Leclerc, but nothing for the Macomber. I thought the blanket would take longer to finish, i.e., more than three weeks.

There are a number of things I would love to start: a) a rug with linen wetspun warp and Collingwood rug yarn, but the linen I ordered from Webs a few weeks ago is on backorder, b) fabric for a poncho for a friend's birthday this fall, but part of the warp is on backorder, as well, and c) the linen and cottolin sample for a duvet cover, but one of the colors is...on backorder...

Off the top of my head, the only thing I had planned for which I have all the materials is another set of t-shirt rag rugs...