In these times of stay at home orders we all need something to do with our excess time. Some of us are starting new hobbies; some are returning to previous hobbies.
Many years ago, back in the early 1960s, my mother and I started doing Swedish weaving to make decorated tea towels.
I decided to try that again. So I bought some materials and picked a pattern and this is four examples of what they look like:
I bought one set of embroidery floss in a selection of browns and a huge hunk of material that we cut into tea towel size pieaces. The material is called huck toweling and it is a specialty weave that has what is known a floats. Floats are pairs of threads that stand out from the background material. In Swedish weaving you run the floss through those lifted thread to make the patterns. From the back of the cloth you don’t see anything since the floss never actually penetrates the cloth.
Each towel uses two colors of thread so I sorted my collection into lights and darks and picked one each for each towel. The primary color get used up one one towel but the secondary color offers enough to do two towels.
Then I realized neither Dave nor I wanted to use these small tea towels for drying dishes. So, I am embroidering both ends of each towel instead of just one end then I will cut them in half and hem them to make place mats instead. We use place mats every day to protect our wood table so it will be nice to have several of these.
In some craft cultures you intentionally make an error in each piece because only God’s creations are perfect. I haven’t had to be intentional yet.
TTYL,
Linda
