Bird's-eye Towels

Day 263: The floor loom is naked once again. This morning, I finished up a square "leftover" and a small sample piece for my files, using up the last of a warp hung on a traditional bird's-eye draft. Quite a bit of pattern variation is possible using bird's-eye and coupling it with colour changes provides an even greater range of possibilities. I think my favourite among these are the two rainbows, and they were also the easiest to weave. The one on the left shows the pattern as it appears on the reverse. The most problematic was the blue second from the right in the top row. The treadling between blue and light blue did not proceed in an exact opposite, making it easy to throw the pattern off. The towels have not yet been fulled by washing, so the weave appears somewhat loose and irregular at this point. Once they've been through the wash, the fibers will plump up and become more compact. Some shrinkage will occur during washing because they are 100% cotton.