Happy Bride to Be!
The wonderful husband and I met while attending LSU in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, many, many moons ago.
While in college, he was also a Fiji (Phi Gamma Delta). He has a great many friends, some of the closest comprising his brother Fijis and their wives.
The daughter of some these great friends is getting married this month. The bride's mother is a beautiful lady who has been so gracious and kind to me all these years.
When we received notice of the marriage, I decided I wanted to do something extra special for the couple. I contacted the mother and asked if she thought they might like a custom set of place mats and napkins. She kindly helped me with color selections (She will have white China and her kitchen has red/green/gold or bronze in it), and I was off to the races.
A couple of years ago, I made these plain weave and twill towels:
I really liked them, especially the asymmetrical stripes.
For place mats and napkins, the towels were too wide, but I was able to scale down the weaving width (and width of the stripes) by taking percentages. I needed a weaving width of 14", rather than 20", so I multiplied the number of ends for each stripe color by 70% to obtain the size I wanted, but retained the scale.
It worked beautifully!
While in college, he was also a Fiji (Phi Gamma Delta). He has a great many friends, some of the closest comprising his brother Fijis and their wives.
The daughter of some these great friends is getting married this month. The bride's mother is a beautiful lady who has been so gracious and kind to me all these years.
When we received notice of the marriage, I decided I wanted to do something extra special for the couple. I contacted the mother and asked if she thought they might like a custom set of place mats and napkins. She kindly helped me with color selections (She will have white China and her kitchen has red/green/gold or bronze in it), and I was off to the races.
A couple of years ago, I made these plain weave and twill towels:
I really liked them, especially the asymmetrical stripes.
For place mats and napkins, the towels were too wide, but I was able to scale down the weaving width (and width of the stripes) by taking percentages. I needed a weaving width of 14", rather than 20", so I multiplied the number of ends for each stripe color by 70% to obtain the size I wanted, but retained the scale.
It worked beautifully!
I used 8/2 cotton for the warp with a sett of 20.
For the place mats, I used 8/8 cotton for the weft and wove to a length of 24" under tension to accommodate shrinkage and hem. The napkins used 10/2 cotton for the weft to make them finer and a bit silkier, as the cotton was mercerized. I also wove them to a length of 14" under tension.
A 13-yard warp produced a total of 10 place mats (12" x 18" finished) and 13 napkins (~ 12"' x 12" finished). I always strive to make more than I need, in case there are skipped threads or other problems. (Bonus: the extras are going to my mother as part of her Mother's Day gifts!)
Once they were done and off the loom, I was a bit concerned about the red bleeding during washing, as I wash them on regular cycle with warm/cold. I took a couple of the napkins and threw them in with a normal load, but added white vinegar to the bleach dispenser, just to be sure.
They came out great!
So, I washed the remaining items without the vinegar. Thankfully, there was no bleeding.
Once they were pressed and hemmed, I took the liberty of a quick shot with my dishes and some cute napkin rings I picked up.
Not the best staging or photography, by I thought they looked nice.
Next, I rolled the place mats together and secured each napkin with a ring before packaging everything together for shipping.
Last night, the husband received a message from the lovely, sweet bride.
She was thrilled and delighted!!
YAY!
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