Hello friends,

Today I thought I'd share with you a set of tea towels that I made as part of my weaving studies with the Jane Stafford School of Weaving. I'm currently making my way through Season 2 of Jane's course work, which looks at colour and design in weaving. These tea towels are part of the Season 2 Episode 4 Colour and Weave sample, which shows what colour patterns look like with dark and light repeats on a plain basic weave.

My loom is an Ashford 8 shaft jack floor loom, which I bought just over a year ago, and it's been amazing and easy to weave on.

First up we have the full colour and weave sample. The warp is threaded with patterns of dark (D) vs light (L) colours in blocks, for example DLDL or DDL, and each are separated by a small yellow stripe of plain weave, in seven blocks. The weft is then woven in the same pattern as the warp, to give squarish colour blocks, which end up showing a large number of different patterns within one tea towel sample. It's a great way to get a large number of samples in a small amount of space. You can then isolate each block to see which patterns you might be interested in using for a bigger project.

After doing the sampler, I had plenty of warp left over to try longer samples of the patterns I was interested in from the first sample.

In the end I was able to make 5 full length tea towels, which I then scanned using our printer/scanner so that I had copies of each sample before the tea towels went into the wash.

Each of the tea towels, apart from the first full sampler, will be used in the kitchen as tea towels, which is great because we were running low on them. But the first full sampler stays in my weaving folder as a reference weaving sample. I have since labelled both the warp and the weft for easy referencing of each colour block. I plan to use some of the patterns for future work projects for my business Hearth & Oak, where I weave and sew textiles to sell in my online store.

I'm very pleased with this section of work, and now it's time to move onto the next block of course work.

I love learning new techniques in weaving, and Jane Stafford's School of Weaving is a great way to do this at a good price that I can afford. If you are looking to learn to weave, or upgrade your skills, I recommend checking it out.

Have a wonderful day

Julie-Ann

Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky.

Tags: 2025, Sampler, Study, Tea Towel, Weaving, Winter

Hello friends,

While I was recovering from surgery back in March 2023, I spent the first couple of weeks resting either in bed, or on the couch. One of the benefits of it was it gave me plenty of time for crafting, and cross stitching in particular. I had started working on the Carrot Forest cross stitch pattern from Owl Forest Embroidery back in 2022, and I was already three quarters of the way through the project before my surgery.

I love the aesthetic of Owl Forest Embroidery, and I had bought this pattern in early 2022 because the mix of uniquely patterned carrots and cute white rabbits was completely adorable. I made some changes to the pattern, for the background I used 16 count black Aida, and for the DMC colours for the carrots, I changed them to DMC608 and DMC741. I wanted a really stark contrast between the cross stitch pattern and the background, to give it a chalkboard effect that would match my mushroom sampler cross stitch I already had framed in my craft room.

Cross stitching on black Aida is tricky in order to easily see the stitching holes. It's best to stitch it during the daytime with strong daylight, or at night with a white cloth underneath and a strong white light above. The other thing to take into account with stitching on black Aida is that it is possible to see the coloured DMC floss underneath the Aida if you're moving to a different section of the project. I made a point of not jumping sections between each carrot or rabbit, and I used the loop start method to start off each section so there would be no tails underneath.

I prefer a good drum-like tightness of my fabric while stitching, and moved my cross stitch project over to a Nurge square plastic hoop when I recently got one. I'm really happy with the even, tight tension of the fabric in the Nurge hoop, but at the same time it is really gentle on the stitches underneath. The other thing I like about the Nurge square hoops is that it gives you more room to work with, especially in the edges of projects.

I had made decent progress in 2022, and my favorite part of stitching was watching the rabbits appear, surrounded by giant carrots. When I picked the project back up after surgery, only three carrots, and a small section of the border remained, and in about a week the project was finally finished.

I'm really pleased with the my cross stitch overall, and I've since washed and ironed the project. The dimensions of the project are a little weird, so it's going to be a little tricky to find a frame which will fit it nicely. We have a bunch of old picture frames that were given to us, so I'll try there first, and if I have no luck I'll try checking out the local op shops to see if they have any that might do. My Mushroom cross stitch project is in a white frame, so if I don't have any luck finding a white frame, I think I'll paint whatever frame I do find to be the same colour.

Have a wonderful day

Julie-Ann

Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon.

Tags: 2023, Aida, Bunnies, Carrot Forest, Carrot Sampler, Cross Stitch, Embroidery, Framing, Hobbies, Owl Forest Embroidery, Rabbits, Sampler