Can I Make a Project With a Different Yarn?-Blog Post
One of our frequently asked questions is “How do I make a project with a different yarn?” Michele loves the Seaside towel that is made with 8/2 unmercerized cotton yarn. She would like to make them with the 10/2 Tubular Spectrum™ mercerized cotton yarns. Let’s follow her journey to convert the Seaside Towel, in the Seaglass colorway from 8/2 unmercerized cotton yarn to 10/2 Tubular Spectrum™ Mercerized Cotton.
By Michele B.
I love the Seaglass colorway of the Seaside towels. However, I would like some dishtowels to be made from the finer and more durable Tubular Spectrum™ Mercerized Cotton. So, I would like to convert the original draft from 8/2 yarn to 10/2 yarn and then use Tubular Spectrum™ colors. The original towels look like this picture shown at the right.
Keeping the Number of Warp Ends Makes a Narrower Towel
The simplest way to convert from 8/2 (sett at 20 EPI) to 10/2 (with a sett of 24 EPI), is to keep the same number of ends. This will make the towels smaller. The original towel has 387 warp ends and the towel is a bit over 19” wide. (387 ends divided by a sett of 20 EPI is 19.35”). If I sett the same 387 ends at 24 EPI, the towel would be just over 16” wide. (387 ends divided by 24 EPI is 16.12”). Those towels would be great to hang in the powder room, but I want to make full sized kitchen towels.
Add Warp Ends to Make a Wider Towel
I want a towel about the same size as the original towel: about 19”. Nineteen inches wide with a sett of 24 EPI is 456 ends. So, I need to add approximately 69 warp ends. In the pattern, there are 7 color warp stripes across the towel. To spread out the extra 69 warp ends, I need about 10 more ends per warp stripe to make the towel about 19” wide.
Change Number of Threading Repeats
Now I need to think about the woven structure of the towel and see how to add those additional 10 warp ends into the pattern. Here is a partial draft of the original towel. This shows two warp stripes and one weft stripe. Each warp stripe has 6 repeats of an 8-thread rosepath sequence, with an additional 3 ends, threaded 1,2,1 to balance the pattern for the stripe.
One Repeat or Two?
Here is one repeat of the 8-thread rosepath sequence. I need to add 10 threads. If I add just one repeat, I have added less than 10 threads. Adding two repeats will add 16 threads.
Wider Towel
Because I enjoy big towels, I’ll add 2 repeats in each of the seven color sections. I now have 112 more ends (16 threads x 7 stripes = 112). This is a bit more than the 69 I needed, but I like a generous towel. After adding all those extra ends, I have a total of 499 warp ends, sett at 24 EPI. My warp now measures 20.79” in the reed.
Wider Windowpanes
The draft with 499 ends is pleasing, but I felt the dark stripes lost their umph. To compensate, I made the dark stripes 2 threads wider. Expanding the dark stripes from 5 ends to 7. I did this by recoloring one thread on each side of the original stripe. The draft is still the same 499 ends.
Longer Towel
To make the towels longer, I also need to add weft yarn. In this pattern, the weft colors are treadled as drawn in. There are 8 picks in a repeat. Adding 3 extra repeats in each of the seven weft stripes would be an extra inch. (3 repeats x 8 weft picks = 24 picks). If I do that to each of the 7 weft stripes, I have made the towels 7” longer, and now they have about the same width to length ratio as the original towels.
The New Colors!
Now that I have my draft, I can replace the 8/2 yarn with Tubular Spectrum™ colors. This is a great chance to use our Playing with Color Cards. I love the clear bright colors of the Tubular Spectrum™ mercerized yarn colors are brighter. Although this is one of the reasons I prefer them, I still want the feel of the SeaGlass towels.
Here are my Tubular Spectrum color choices:
The first color is Maurice Brassard’s ‘Teal’. It doesn’t look anything like Tubular Spectrum™ Teal. I’m leaning toward Light Gray.
Bleu Cobalt is a pale blue and I’ll use Sky Blue.
Seaton is a blue green. I looked at Sea Green (too green) but preferred Tubular Spectrum™ Teal.
Sapin is greener and I like Sea Green for this.
Forest is a nice deep green to replace Vert Fonce, but I chose to move to the bluer side of things and use Navy.
Resized and Recolored
And this is what the new towel looks like! Happy kitchen towels, in long wearing bright 10/2 Tubular Spectrum™ cotton.
Finally, let’s recap the steps to change your project from one yarn to another.
- Determine the size of the new project.
- Fit the EPI of the new yarn to the project.
- Add (or subtract) threading repeats to achieve the desired size.
- Recolor if needed or desired!
But Wait, There’s Always More!
Now I’m looking at this 8-thread rosepath repeat and considering changing it to a versatile 8-shaft draft, but that’s a subject for another blog post!