Written by June 2026 – Weaving Exploration
by: Mary Collings
I was exploring websites of guilds that belong to MAFA & I ran across this: Sixty Scarves | WGGB The Weavers Guild of Greater Baltimore published a book of sixty original scarves for their 60th anniversary. Way cool! So, as the membership coordinator, I recalled that my emails state “Fredericksburg Spinners and Weavers Guild was established in 1982”. That means that we’re on the cusp of our 45th year AND 50 years isn’t really that far away.
Last year, I wove some hotpads – free pattern here: Flower Garden Hot Pads – Schacht Spindle Company – that were overshot patterned double weave. I decided to try name drafting … perhaps there’d be some interesting patterns that I could substitute into this pattern. The idea would be to commemorate the 45th anniversary of the guild. So – I set about doing a name draft. I did use some paper and graph paper… and then I found an online name draft generator. Now we’re cookin’!
Weaving with Janet Dawson has a name draft generator online that allows you to download the .wif file. WWJD Namedraft Generator [beta] – Weaving With Janet Dawson
I used my handweaving.net account to upload the .wif file and see what happened. I went through a lot of iterations. I also tried a lot of combinations for the phrase. It turns out that “spinners and weavers” has a LOT of similar/repetitive letters.
I settled on “45spinnerweaverguildfredericksburg” with the intention of doing a 1 for 1 namedraft substitution and reflecting it around the ‘fredericksburg’. So my design would in the end represent the following phrase “45spinnerweaverguildfredericksburgdliugrevaewrennips54”. That is not what happened! I really liked the results from using something on the site called “motifs”. This is a substitution that I don’t really understand (admittedly). I understand that a larger threading is substituted for each letter – I’m not sure what that was. Regardless…. Cool things resulted & now I’ve got something to work with to make hotpads!
As I often do, I plan to do a yarn substitution. I’d like these to be thick! I substituted smaller than the pattern called for last time & they were too thin. I’m planning to use a peaches and cream yarn to make these this time. That drops my number of ends. The master yarn chart suggests 8 epi for worsted weight cotton (look at me using my knitting terms) and that should end up with an 8 ppi length. Since I know that I’ll have draw in, I’m planning for a 10” width on the loom, hoping for a 8” hot pad in the end after I weave and wet finish.
So – now I have a gigantic draft – I’m picking a vertical slice of the draft to make the hot pads. If I retain the treadling and adjust it appropriately, I can make several pleasing designs on the same warp. You can see that I ended up with 84 ends – it just worked for making a consistent border and maintaining the “symmetry” of the pattern. My hot pad drafts are included below.
