A priceless portfolio of weaving charts for loop potholders.
Next up in our series of shadow-weave knotwork designs is the Savoy Knot, also known as a figure-eight knot. (Chart posted for 19 pegs.)
Woven on a Cottage Looms 19-peg loom with FriendlyLoom traditional loops in white and seaglass.
As you would predict from a shadow-weave design with a scattering of over-two floats, this pulls up slightly more than a tabby design but less than a twill. (There are no floats longer than two loops.)
Frequent visitors to our site may notice a few changes that rolled out over the last day or so.
The biggest of these updates is that the full list of charts has moved from the front page to a secondary page; this hopefully makes the front page a little less overwhelming to first-time visitors, who are now greeted with a bit more introductory text and navigation options.
Among those new navigation options are links to browse just one section of the chart listing at once; for folks who know they only want to work in plain-weave or are looking for a specific style of twill, this should make the search for charts slightly smoother. This section filter also appears as a pull-down menu on the chart listing.
A less obvious addition is a new option appearing at the top of the chart listing: a “Show Images” checkbox. Turning this on reorganizes the page to include thumbnail images of each chart, making it much easier to scan through the designs for one that catches your eye.
I hope these changes make our site more useful to readers, but if you run into any rough edges or have suggestions for how to further improve it, please let us know!
Okay, this is fun! Inspired by the background weave pattern on the “Outstanding in her field” potholder I wove this morning, I whipped up a sample with just that weave throughout. It’s a 1/2 basketweave, by which I mean over-2/under-2 across the row, then shift 2 columns to weave over-2/under-2 across the next row. (See photos on the loom, below.)
Love the “teeth” of the green & lime potholder, which uses a 1/1 alternating color sequence for both rows and columns.
The yellow & plum potholder is the exact same weave pattern using a threading pattern alternating colors 2/2 for columns and 1/1 for rows. (That will make more sense when you look at the on-loom photo, I promise!)
The outcome is distinctly ribbed and gently textured, but flat overall with no significant lumps. Very bendy, with little skew.
[Click for charts for Half Basketweave Stripes and Half Basketweave Combs]
Here’s our newest chart: a distinctive shadow-weave design with a pleasantly-textured surface. After binding off, the center of this design pulls up to form a raised pad, surrounded by gentle ribs.
This is a traditional motif found in Slavic redwork embroidery, variously said to represent a field or the sun shining on it. Adapted from a hand-stitched example by Hanya Vladimirovna Polotskaya.
Here’s a brand-new chart with an especially-plush weave: “Three-Three Twill Solo Wave.”
This is a variation of our “Three-Three Twill Zig Zags” chart, with the contrasting color restricted to a single stripe. There are charts for 28/27 pegs and for 19 pegs.
Note that this shrinks up even more than a straight 3/3 twill, and as a result of that, it’s super thick and soft. The example below is woven with pro-size FL/Harrisville loops, 28 in the warp and 27 in the weft, and after binding off it’s just 6.5″ x 7″.
There are some long over-five floats, but the fabric holds together well and there are no gaps in the weave.
The third in our series of knot designs is about at the limit of what you can pack into a traditional-size loom: “Mascle Knot,” with one strand making six loops and nine crossings. (Chart posted for 19 pegs.)
The example below is woven with cayenne and white loops — and we’d love to see it in other colors!
As with the other shadow-weave knots, the potholder draws up slightly more than a pure-tabby weave but not as much as a twill. The longest floats on the front side are over-two, while the back includes some threes.
Here’s another entry in our series of shadow-weave twisted-cord designs: “Solomon’s Knot.” (Chart posted for 19 pegs.)
Piglet wove this example on a 19-peg loom using plum and denim loops — try some other color pairings and let us know how they turn out!
As with the other shadow-weave knots, the potholder draws up slightly more than a pure-tabby weave but not as much as a twill. The longest floats on the front side are over-two, while the back includes some threes.
Following up on the “Twisted Cords” design from last week, here’s another newly-charted shadow-weave design on the same theme: the “Bowen Knot.” (Chart posted for 19 pegs.)
Piglet wove the version below on a 19-peg loom (Cottage Loom) using plum and white loops (Friendly Loom) — if you try this, we’d love to see photos of how it turns out in other color pairings!
The resulting potholder is very flexible, with a puffier section containing the central knots, surrounded by a slightly thinner, flatter margin. There are some three-floats on the back side, but they’re very balanced and the fabric holds together well. The structure is rotationally symmetric, but the back side looks nothing like the front, instead showing the “boxes and equals-signs” that are the hallmark of these knot patterns’s undersides.
Here’s a brand new pattern, just charted and woven for the first time this week: “Twisted Cords.”
As often happens, after weaving the draft pattern, Piglet was able to identify areas for improvement — in this case, a dozen spots where floats could be reoriented to make the lines stay straighter when removed from the loom — which I’ve now incorporated into the charts so future versions will look crisper.
Charts are posted for 27 pegs and for 19 pegs.
Piglet notes: “The distributed small floats throughout the pattern make a fabric that is flat and thin like tabby, but extremely flexible. You can crumple it in your hand. Great for pot lid knobs and pan handles.”
As part of our exploration of the possibilities of lozenge twill patterns on woven potholders, Piglet has been making up matching sets of traditional size potholders in a range of adjacent patterns, the first of which is shown below.
Despite each being quite distinct, they make a lovely set, with recurring motifs that show again and again, but rotated, inverted, or paired differently.
The following diagram shows the four different patterns used in this first group:
When comparing the charts to the photos, or looking at the on-loom and off-loom photos, you can see the ways the patterns shift and soften when they’re bound off.
Charts for each of these are included in the PDF found in yesterday’s Lozenge Twill Madness post, and will eventually be added to the main collection on the front page.
Piglet’s woven a dozen more variations, so additional posts will follow in the coming days — and I hope these photos will encourage other folks to dive in and try weaving a few of their own!
