Tag: Tea Towel Time with Jane

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May 31, 2022 newsletter

In Case You Missed it!

We thought it was time to think about colourful weaving as we start to see colour finally popping up in our gardens after a cool, wet, spring. Our “wet” coast gardens are still waiting for temperatures to get above 10°C overnight! Tea Towel Time with Jane is a perfect example of “exploding” colour that you can have tons of fun with – as I did weaving them 😉 Scroll to the bottom of this newsletter and you’ll see that we have made Tea Towel Time with Jane, the Facebook videos, available on YouTube. I had so much fun weaving those towels, I wanted to share them with everyone.

We also thought you might enjoy some of our more recent tea towel kits that give you different colours, structures and yarn to play with.

Just Monk’ing Around

C$67.50

Choose one of three different colour schemes, Berry Bowl, Kiwi, or Surf’s Up for your kit and weave 8 towels, using 8/2 cotton, in Monk’s Belt and Plain Weave.

Check out Just Monk’ing Around kits!

Spring at the Cabin

C$66.50

Spring at the Cabin is woven in a classic Colour & Weave effect on Plain Weave. The kit includes everything you need to weave these lovely towels in 8/2 cotton.

Read More on Spring at the Cabin

Tea Towel Time with Jane

Original Colourway Kit C$89.00

This is the original colourway that Jane wove live on Facebook (and now available on YouTube!) With this kit, you’ll weave 12 towels in Plain Weave, 2/2 Twill, Basket Weave, Turned Twill, Broken Twill, AND 1/3-3/1 Twill! Now that’s a whole bunch of fun at the loom!

Read More About Tea Towel Time Kit

Tea Towel Time with Jane

English Garden Colourway Kit C$89.00

With all the same weave structures as the original Tea Towel Time with Jane above, you can weave these in a different colourway – using the smashing colours of Nile, Navy, Magenta and let’s not forget, Hot Pink!

Read More on English Garden Kit
Shop all JST Towel Kits!

Tea Towel Time With Jane videos now on YouTube!

Those of you who follow us on Facebook, know that Tea Towel Time with Jane (TTTWJ) was originally done live on Facebook. Since some of you aren’t Facebook users, we thought that it would be a great idea to also make it available on our JST YouTube channel. We’ve added the 16 videos into a playlist, starting by Jane winding the warp and ending with the Show & Tell. If you have ever wanted to be standing beside Jane, watch her wind her warp and put it on her loom – this is your virtual chance to do it. You get to listen to her chat with you through every step of the process!

Take me to the videos!
We offer FREE shipping on all Louet looms within Continental North America. We also offer the option to pay a $1000.00 CAD deposit on your loom with the balance due when the loom ships out to you. This gives you the flexibility to make smaller payments towards your balance, at your convenience.

Here to help

Have a weaving question? Find us on the Jane Stafford School of Weaving Forum and on Weave with Jane Stafford at Ravelry.

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October 6th, 2021 newsletter

Tea Towel Time with Jane New English Garden Kit

One of the wonderful things about designing kits is that sometimes a customer asks if we can do it in their favourite colours….. English Garden is one of the outcomes.  Roslyn Wallace is a weaver here on Salt Spring and she had woven the original colourway of Tea Towel Time with Jane, had a blast but then wanted to recreate it in colours from her rose garden. We played with a few colour variations and Voila….. it is stunning. These collaborations always leave me with a big smile on my face.  Thanks Ros 🙂
Level of Difficulty: Beginner
Weave structure: Plain weave, 2/2 Twill, Basket Weave, Turned Twill, Broken Twill, 1/3 or 3/1 Twill
Each kit weaves: 12 towels. Finished dimensions: 21″x 27″ hemmed.
Loom requirements: Shafts: 4 or 8
Reed: 12 dent
Weaving Width: 26″

Each kit includes:
Weaving instructions (including draft)
2 cones of 8/2 cotton- Nile
2 cones of 8/2 cotton- Hot Pink
2 cones of 8/2 cotton- Magenta
1 cone of 8/2 cotton- Navy
Shop the Tea Towel Time with Jane – English Garden Kit

Looking for a gift for the holidays?

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Jane Stafford School of Weaving.
 Over 45 weaving lessons with a new episode every 5 weeks
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Ask Jane

Hemstitching Tea towels (from the JST Knowledge Base)

Do you hemstitch tea towels even when they are going to have turned hems? Or, do you just machine stitch the ends after removing them from the loom? I’ve always machine stitched the ends but am wondering if I could skip this step if I hemstitched on the loom…will hemstitching encased in a seam hold up to lots of machine washing?

I don’t hemstitch for a towel with a turned hem. I do just what you do….machine stitch the edge and then I double fold and pin. Sometimes I hand stitch, sometimes I machine stitch, it depends on my patience level on the day. I even have a few towels that I have never gotten around to hemming, but I still use them. When those are in use I loudly proclaim that hemming of any kind is highly overrated. :^)

Here to Help

You can always find us on the Jane Stafford School of Weaving Forum or on Weave with Jane Stafford at Ravelry.

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JST Blog October Weaver Spotlight!

Hi kids,

This month we’re shining the weaver’s spotlight on Rebecca Logan from Stony Plain, Alberta. Rebecca is a fabulous weaver, an animal lover extraordinaire and I love her for her gardening skills. I love how she takes the seeds I sow and grows an entirely different garden from each packet of weaving seeds 🙂
Yes, we sow weaving seeds at JST and the end result is why I love to share ideas….it is such a joy to watch gardens spring up all over the place. Important take away…..be inspired by things you see around you and then take those ideas and gently guide them to your happy place.

I hope you enjoy Rebecca’s take on Tea Towel Time with Jane….

Sending tons of love
Jane

When I saw Jane’s Tea Towel Time towels, I was immediately hooked. They were all so beautiful and colourful, and yet each was uniquely fascinating. I had to try them!  

Although Jane’s colour choice was gorgeous, I was feeling spicy at the time, and substituted hot colours for her cools, sticking with similar values.  Her black became my chocolate, the light bright green was substituted with cayenne, and the purple and peacock became merlot and magenta. 

I made a mistake while winding the warp chains, missing a few repeats of the four-end sequence, so then had to repeat the error with a later warp chain for symmetry.  

A run of twelve towels, each different, was like freedom at the loom. With each towel I could try something completely different, or play upon something I liked about an earlier towel. For example, I wove three towels with the same border sequence, one in straight draw twill, one in basketweave, and one in turned twill, just to be able to enjoy the subtle differences. 

Another favourite was what I called the wiggles. Jane wove them as point twill treadling, but I wanted them to be more wiggle than zigzag, so played about in my weaving software to find the correct rosepath treadling that gave me those desired wiggles. That towel was so much fun I wove it twice, with different weft colours.  

That towel was so much fun I wove it twice, with different weft colours.  

Everyone who sees the finished towels understands how much fun they must have been to weave, although that may be my gushing enthusiasm in talking about them. I know that such long warps (12 yards, as long as I could make) no longer intimidate me. Now I see them as an opportunity for play!  And maybe that was Jane’s intent – to encourage the freedom of playing at the loom.  

I was lucky enough to have five different in-person classes with Jane before she went digital, and consider those weeks some to the most important in my development as a weaver.  Now that the guild is available, I’m diving even deeper into the most joyful details. Weaving is a gift that will keep me interested for a lifetime, and hand woven dish towels have become my art form.  

Learn more about the JST Online Guild Weaving Lessons!

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Tea Towel Time with Jane in Support of the Maiwa Foundation

Hey kids, I just wanted to share a wee story, some great news and a great pattern. 

I need to thank all of you for your continued support of JST… we feel so blessed each day when we come to work and see your orders.  Most of the staff continue to work from home but Elizabeth, Sharon and I are in the studio Monday to Friday answering questions and providing continued support to our amazing community. AND because of this support we are so pleased to announce that JST will be making a $5000.00 donation to our favourite charity… The Maiwa Foundation… on behalf of all our customers.

As many of you know, the Maiwa Foundation is very near and dear to my heart. I have had the privilege of travelling to India on three occasions with Charllotte Kwon. Those trips have changed my life in ways I can’t even begin to describe. It was on one of those trips that I met Kathy Marshall from Sabahar… and working with Sabahar has also changed my life in ways I can’t even begin to describe. I know there are thousands of voices that echo my feelings about Maiwa and Charllotte.

Last week I asked Charllotte for an update and how we can help.

With 1.3 billion people, India is one of the most populous nations on Earth. The government implemented a strict 21 day lockdown, with just a few hours notice. Our artisans had to make their way back to their homes as they could, walking long distances as transit services and car traffic were shut down. Everyone remains inside their homes. People are not permitted outside, so travelling to work is out of the question.

Our business relationship with artisans has always been a long-term one and we are in regular contact with many of them. The primary concern for each of the artisans we know is not the difficulty of remaining at home but the uncertainty of the future.

The Maiwa Foundation is marshalling its resources for the uncertain future of craft. We also don’t know what the future holds, but we know it will not be easy. We want to be prepared to help where we are most needed. We know that it will be possible to keep hands on the loom, to keep the dye bath going, to plant organic cotton, to harvest, weave, dye and sew. We trust that you share our optimism and thank you for your continued support

If you would like to make your own personal donation to the Maiwa Foundation or learn more, click here.

So Now for the Towel Story!

Last month I was feeling a tad down in the dumps and realized I needed a project to bite into. I couldn’t settle on anything, kept procrastinating and finally found a picture on the JST Instagram feed that turned out to be a design by my friend Sharon Broadley (Colourwoven). I loved the colours and graphic, asked her if I could use it and all of a sudden I felt grounded again and ready to roll.

I changed the colour and weave sequence, changed the graphic a bit, did a sketch and hit the warping mill running… and then I thought about everyone else out there that might be feeling like I was and decided to try Facebook Live… like really! Apparently there are folks out there waiting for someone to make a warp live on Facebook.

So that is how this started… the next day I dressed a loom… live on Facebook Live and then I threaded it, sleyed it and wove one towel everyday for the next two weeks live on Facebook Live at 1 pm PST.

By the time I was finished it had developed into Tea Towel Time with Jane and we had created a fun, supportive, caring community with hundreds of weavers watching and asking questions.

After everything was woven and hemmed I decided that I would make the pattern available to everyone in our community at a price that anyone could pay… whatever you want :). All proceeds from the sale of the pattern will go to the Maiwa Foundation. So pay whatever you want and get your pattern here.

What will become of those towels you ask? 🙂 We’re going to have a silent auction sometime during the month of June and will let you know about that once we get it all set up.

We have also made these towels into a kit so if you’re hankering to make your own set of towels click here. Please note that I used bits and pieces from my stash in some of the towels and those colours are not included in the kit. There is enough yarn in the kit for 12 towels.

You can still view all of the Tea Towel Time with Jane episodes on the Jane Stafford Textiles FaceBook page. The quality of our live feed was not great because we live in the boonies and have very slow internet… but the banter is fun and there were some great teaching opportunities 🙂

Hope you are all well, always thinking about you.

Love Jane

Tea Towel Time with Jane Kit $89.00 CAD