Whoo's There?

Several years ago I designed a weaving pattern inspired by an Irish tune I was learning at the time. Because this pattern was created for my Megado dobby loom, it is a multishaft threading that has the potential for lots of variations. As I played around with some of these pattern possibilities, one variation seemed to resemble many little owls looking out at me from the cloth. After washing the fabric, the owls were even more apparent. I was delighted with the serendipitous little birds and wove quite a few towels in that pattern. Of course, after a couple of warps using that threading for the owls and more, I moved on to other projects, but I knew I would have to invite the owls back to roost in my loom again sometime.

Well, they're back and as cute as ever. For this warp, I used 8/2 unmercerized cotton yarns in 6 pale earth tones arranged randomly across the warp. The sett is 24 ends per inch. (For you non-weavers, sett means how many threads are in one inch of a warp.) The weft yarns I've used so far are 8/2 cotton and 8/2 tencel in darker earth tones. Here's a close-up of some of the owls looking at you. Above the woven fabric you can see the warp colors.



The woven cloth from this project will become towels, breadcloths, and treasure bags. I put 13 yards of warp on my loom and have lots of weaving ahead of me. In addition to the owlets, I'll use some of the other pattern variations for this threading and perhaps discover some new ones. One of the variations I'll use is the original pattern I created for that Irish tune. But that's a post for another day.