Planning a weaving project

Planning is a part of every weaving project. One must decide what the final product will be. What yarns and weave structure will give that product?

I recently started a weaving project. I decided that I wanted to make some kitchen towels. I had some cotton bouclé yarn. For those that don't know what that means, it is yarn that has multiple strands, one of which is longer than the others. That longer strand makes loops that resemble a terry cloth towel.

I had two different colors of the same yarn (from Zuercher Stalder). I wanted to show the difference in the two green colors. I decided that I would use a twill structure. This weave structure makes what looks like lines in the fabric, made by the different colors.

I had used this type of yarn before; that fabric had lengthwise stripes of color, with diamond shapes in the fabric. This time I decided to limit the shape to just diagonal stripes of color.

With those decisions made, it was time to use my spreadsheet for lots of calculations. I had to decide how long and how wide each towel would be. I needed to decide how many towels I would make. I needed to enter weaving stuff like "draw-in", shrinkage, loom waste, etc. Also important are things like meters / gram of yarn, etc. Whew!

When I finished my calculations, I found that I did have enough yarn for my project. Sometimes at this stage I need to change some part of my project to accommodate the quantity of yarn I have. (I usually weave large projects from yarn I have on hand.)

Onward to preparing the yarn for weaving!