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Clasp Weave: Tri-Color Flags

Flags, you say? *You* get a flag, and *YOU* get a flag! Everybody gets flags!

Tricolors, anyway. 😉

Matthew noted that the 7″ traditional loop is 2/3 the size of the 10″ pro loop. So… 3 traditional loops folded in half equal one pro loop. Therefore, we can use this ratio to create three colorblocks across the width of our potholder!

We wove the French flag with denim, white, and cayenne traditional loops.

(You could use this same technique to make a square pro-sized potholder with matching colors of traditional-size loops in one direction and pro loops in the other.)

The photos below show the process, starting with warping the loom with loops folded over and threaded through each other. I wove the center section first, as I always do, but you could also start from either end. Before transitioning from one section to the next, check the next section for twisted loops and untwist them so they all line up nicely.

Four-Four Shift Twill Rainbow

Okay, this one has to be seen to be believed!

Because of the way the warp loops are hidden under the weft and only peek through occasionally, it almost looks like we’ve found a stash of multicolor tie-dyed loops, or maybe we’ve strung the loops at an angle, or some other kind of trickery — but as you can see from the “on the loom” photos, they’re just regular single-color loops woven in the normal fashion.

This uses the “four-four shift twill” pattern from our site. It’s a simple over-four/under-four sequence, so it weaves up really fast, but the offset from one row to the next is different from regular twill and that’s what produces this effect.

The appearance is symmetrical on the front and back sides of the potholder. The example shown here is pro size, but it should work just as well at a traditional size.

Piglet used a rainbow of eleven bright colors, but I suspect you’d also get pleasing results with a different color palette as long as you used a large number of colors. (This weave also looks good in a small number of colors but it no longer exhibits the startling rainbow effect seen here.)

This is a brand-new discovery so we’re still learning what it can do… If you give this a try, please post some photos and let us know how it turned out!

Starting Points for Extra Thickness

Someone recently asked for advice about making thicker potholders, and I thought I would share my recommendations here for easy reference.

Obviously the choice of materials makes a big difference. Opting for high-quality cotton loops or plush wool loops will produce fuller results than if you use thin poly loops or scraggly offcuts.

But the less-obvious factor is weaving structure, where there are a variety of techniques that yield thicker results:

  • Twills produce thicker results. Try Three-Three Houndstooth or Four-Four Twill Fletching.
  • Weaves with raised ribs have room for extra air space. Try Alternating Float Weave, Alladorf 60, or Liége Waffle.
  • Weaves with multiple layers are often twice as thick. Try Padded Basketweave, Three-Three Shift Twill, or Double-Faced Twill.

Charts for all of these are included in our collection.

Kings County Fiber Festival

New York metro-area folks — Piglet and I will be exhibiting at the Kings County Fiber Festival as part of our local living-history group, making and showing potholders based on weaving patterns found in historical textiles.

Next Saturday, October 7 from 10AM to 5PM, we’ll be in Brooklyn’s Washington Park, at the Old Stone House, on Third Street between 4th and 5th Avenues.

The park will be filled with more than fifty fiber-craft exhibitors and vendors, but we should be easy to find — just look around for the group of people who are all wearing medieval-style clothing.

If you’re in the area and enjoy handcrafts, the festival is worth a visit — and please do swing by our table and introduce yourself; we’d love to meet some of you folks in person!

[Update, October 6:] Sadly, the fiber festival has been cancelled due to rain.

Offset Twill Rainbows

Here’s a pair of examples that highlights the extent to which Three-Three Offset Twill weave brings the weft to the surface while hiding most of the warp.

Both of these examples are woven using the same pattern, but in one case the color is in the warp while in the other it’s in the weft — and when removed from the loom, the results are dramatically different.

Woven by Piglet in the autumn of 2022.

Potholder Weave Dimension Reference

I put together a little chart to help visualize the range of sizes produced by different weaving patterns.

The differences are striking: the long-float twills can be as small as 60% of the area of a plain-weave potholder (20% smaller in both height and width), but they make up for that by being up to twice as thick — or even more than that in the case of ribbed and waffled weaves.

This is definitely not an authoritative scientific survey — I just grabbed a ruler and took some rough measurements from a mix of recently-made samples fresh off the loom and well-worn ones that have been hanging in our kitchen for years.

There’s a lot of variation; in places where you see little black bars sticking out of the right edge, those show a range of smaller and larger measurements I took from different examples. There are multiple factors at play, but I suspect the biggest driver is the variation in loops — sometimes you’ll get a bag of loops that are stretchier or tighter than usual, and that impacts the size of the finished product.

These measurements are all from potholders woven with Harrisville (“Friendly Loom”) cotton loops, with no skipped pegs — if you’re using wool or poly loops, I’d expect the results to be different.

Searchable Index

The front page of this site, which contains a listing of all of our published charts, now includes a simple search feature that makes it easier to locate specific charts.

When you visit the home page of potholders.piglet.org, you’ll see a gray field near the top prompting you to “type to search.”

As you type into that field, the list of charts on the page will be filtered to only show matching entries. For example, if you type in “basket” the page will show only basketweave patterns.

Searching only works on the visible titles, so this will not find descriptive commentary that may appear in the comments area on an individual chart.

You can filter for charts by size, so if you type in “19” you’ll see only patterns which include a 19-peg chart.

Search Links

You can also include search terms in links, so if you send someone a link to https://potholders.piglet.org/?nine they will see a listing of just the nine-block charts.

This allows linking to individual charts such as https://potholders.piglet.org/?hallstat, or just the PDF files with https://potholders.piglet.org/?pdf.

Regular Expressions

The search feature uses your browser’s regular-expression engine, so you can search for “17|19” to find patterns with either a 17-peg chart or a 19-peg chart.

These can be included in links, so https://potholders.piglet.org/?waffle|padded will lead people to a page displaying patterns which contain either “waffle” or “padded.”

 

Hands-On Workshop

Hello NYC-adjacent potholder folks! You are invited to join Piglet and me for a free hands-on workshop we’re running for our historical re-creation group in the evening of Thursday, March 16.

We’ll be talking about some of the weaving structures found in pre-modern fabrics, including pieces of cloth that survived from 500, 1500, or 2500 years ago, that were woven in many variations of tabby and twill. We’ll use examples from our stash of potholders to demonstrate the differences, then hand out looms and loops and let people weave up their own potholders using those same styles.

If you live in the NYC area, and have any interest in learning about handcrafts from more than 400 years ago, bring a loom and some loops and join us!

The photograph below shows some of the samples to be discussed. Top Row: 3/1 ribbed twill; 2/1 twill; 3/1 broken twill. Center: 2/2 houndstooth twill; 2/2 broken chevron twill; 2/2 chevron twill; 2/2 diamond twill. Bottom: plain weave with doubled warp; gauze; 3/3 twill.