I recently decided to take advantage of a free shipping offer from Halcyon yarns and ordered two waffle weave dish towel kits. I had never tried weaving waffle weave and the convenience of knowing I’d have the correct amount of yarn and a good set of instructions to follow was appealing to me as a way of learning more about this weaving structure.
The kits arrived quickly and were nicely packaged.
Eager to get started I prepared my warp according to the warping color order provided and proceeded to thread according to the pattern draft. The number of warp ends called for was 404. The draft indicated using floating selvedges which I dutifully added to my warp. But as I completed threading I noticed that I had 2 extra threads. I carefully rechecked my threading thinking I had mis-threaded along the way. But I found my threading to be correct. So after much time and thought I reexamined the instructions and found that the color order chart had accounted for the floating selvedges! I was able to just drop the extra threads before completing beaming the warp. This was a good reminder to myself to always, always read the instructions carefully before embarking on a project!
I began to weave paying attention to the treadling sequence by placing a post-it note on the beater bar.
I noticed that the yarn had a tendency to curl or tangle on the left selvedge.
I had to be careful to correct any loops that became caught. Sometimes I discovered them too late and had to “back weave” to correct the error.
I frequently checked the sett at 18 ends per inch.
The pattern started to develop quite nicely.
Notice that the fabric was quite flat and smooth while under tension on the loom. I thought it was quite pretty!
The kit provided ample yarn to weave the three dish towels. I had enough left over after weaving the third towel to weave a short sample to keep in my record book of completed projects.
After I machine washed and dried the towels the fabric had fluffed up and compressed significantly as should be expected with the waffle weave structure. The resulting towels were soft and almost spongy. I can imagine that they will be super absorbent.
Loomcraft Weaver 