In Pursuit of Perfection

two different waffle towels

As I was nearing the end of this blue warp I started having misgivings.  I'd changed the epi from 36 to 30 because the weft I was wanting to use was somewhat thicker than what I'd used on the last 2/20 merc. warps and thought that a more open warp might work better. 

Since I had another 2/20 merc cotton warp I wanted to do (got lots of that yarn to use up for weft!) I decided to check the finished results before committing to another 30 epi warp.

Am I ever glad I did.  I'm not at all happy with my results in the waffle weave.  The woven illusion actually turned out okay - better than anticipated anyway.

I used two different weft yarns on the waffle weave towels in the photo above, and two somewhat different tie-up/treadlings.  But the different treadlings are not enough to account for the humongous difference in dimensional loss - it has to be the weft yarn.

The towel on the bottom is woven with 2/16 unmerc. cotton.  The towel on the top is woven with the singles 6 cotton that I've used elsewhere for collapse effects.  As you can see, the singles 6 has most definitely collapsed (or torqued, would be a more accurate statement).  There is a 4 inch difference in the width of the two towels and the singles 6 towel is thicker.  The twill stripes in the singles 6 towel has ruffled much more than in the 2/16 towel.

So I'm going to try this again on the beige warp, set at 36 epi and see if that reduces the dimensional loss in the singles 6 weft towels. 

Like I keep telling my student, change one thing and everything changes.  :}