Matthew Cavalletto – Page 7 – Piglet's Potholder Patterns

Adapting A Pattern: Diamonds Case Study

Some of our weaving patterns are adapted from historical sources, but at times this journey can require a fair amount of revision until we settle on a final design we’re happy with.

For the curious, here’s an example of one such journey. I was flipping through images on handweaving.net when one particular design caught my eye.

Detail from “Softened Diamonds,” handweaving.net pattern 74570

I started by choosing a section of that design to replicate as a 27-peg potholder weaving pattern.

I handed this off to Piglet, who promptly wove it up, marking up the chart as she went along.

However, when it came off the loom, the results were disappointing — those long floats weren’t consistently stabilized, and some of them mashed together, producing a design that was no longer symmetrical.

Nonetheless, the diagonal tile effect was attractive, and I was determined to salvage something from this, so we brainstormed a revised design that utilized only the center section, repeated over the entire fabric.

Piglet wove this one up just as quickly, and we crossed our fingers that it would be an improvement.

When it came off the loom, we were pleased to see that the results were much more regular.

But we were still not content with the center of the individual tiles, which lost their crosspieces when off the loom, leaving just a set of angled bars that broke the four-way symmetry of the diamonds.

We were pretty sure we could fix this by switching the center pick of each tile,

And sure enough, that wove up pretty much as we expected:

The result is much more evenly symmetrical.

This version of the “Diamond Tiles” pattern has now been added to our portfolio, along with a related version named “Open Diamond Tiles” that has a bit more space in the middle of each tile.

Tri-Color Twill Splotches

While some of our charts involve complicated weaving patterns, it’s fun to explore the interesting designs that can be produced by combining very regular weaving with a varying choice of loop colors.

Both of the designs shown below are two-two twill throughout, which is to say that you weave over two loops and then under two loops, consistently across the entire fabric, shifting the weaving over by one loop on each row. Because it’s all twill, the resulting fabric is smooth, and slightly smaller and thicker than a plain tabby (over one/under one) woven with the same loops.

They both use three colors — you can choose any three colors you would like — but one is threaded AABBCC while the other uses AABCCB. The result is a repeating pattern of organic shapes that is reminiscent of houndstooth twills, but in smaller and more varied arrangements that might bring to mind modern camouflage designs.

Piglet wove one using forest colors of green, tan, and brown, and the other with winter colors of black, white, and gray. The resulting potholders are symmetrical, with the same designs shown on the back. You can easily adapt this to 18-peg looms by only using the first eighteen rows and columns of the chart.

Tri-Color Twill Splotches finished front view.

June Edition

The June edition of our potholder design collection has been posted as a downloadable PDF.

It contains 89 designs, many at multiple sizes, for a total of 139 charts.

Of those, 15 designs are new since the May edition:

A lovely repeating tile design (Roses and Thorns);
Two styles of nested chevrons (Fish Scales, Three-Color Fish Scales);
Larger heart variations (Super Hearts, Pulsating Heart);
A forest of branches (Branch, Three Parallel Branches, Five Parallel Branches, Seven Parallel Branches, Forked Branch, Branch and Root);
Extra-thick twill weaves (Three-Three Twill, Three-Three Twill Waves, Three-Three Shift Twill, Magical Three-Three Twill).

Most of those are described in recent posts by Piglet here and on Facebook, including photos as well as commentary on the weaving experience and resulting fabric.

The table of contents has been reorganized to group related designs together, which will hopefully make it easier to find charts you might be interested in.

And the online table of contents now highlights any designs added since the last edition, making it easier to find (and print) only the newest pages.

Enjoy!

May Edition

The May edition of Piglet’s Portfolio of Priceless Potholder Patterns was published last night. Now over 70 designs, many in multiple sizes, for a total of over 100 charts. Posted both as a downloadable PDF and as individual page images. Clear monochrome charts can be used on-screen or printed affordably. Available for free under an “open culture” license so you can use, print, share, copy, adapt, and change to create new designs.

Folks who are familiar with our efforts will know that we add new charts from time to time, and May has been especially productive. If you downloaded a PDF six weeks ago it would have had 53 pages — but the latest version is now 113 pages, and it will continue to grow in the future.

We recognize that this “moving target” creates a challenge for folks who want to be able to print the whole thing out one time and treat it as a completed paper book, but it seems like an inescapable part of releasing our work as we go.

FAQ: Why don’t our patterns include color?

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We’re sometimes asked why our weaving charts are drawn in just black and white (or sometimes shades of gray) rather than including specific colors.

Part of the answer is that keeping the charts monochrome makes it easy and affordable for people to print them at home or local service bureaus — color printing at a neighborhood copy shop is often ten times as expensive as black-and-white, and a design that looks great in color may be an unreadable mess of indistinguishable grays if run off on a basic laser printer.

More importantly, we want our designs to inspire you. We encourage people to combine our weaving charts with color inspiration from other sources to create new, never-before-seen designs of their own.

One of the most enjoyable parts of this process has been releasing a new chart online and seeing a flood of people post photos of it woven using wildly different color schemes, including ones we would never have imagined.