The Mountain Cucumber Coverlet is complete!
This is the wet-finished version. It's a little bit bluer than the one I posted last week, as the yarns have bloomed after being washed.
The weaving draft (pattern) came from page144 of Carol Strickler's American Woven Coverlets book (c1987). She calls it Governor's Garden.
After about 1 year of planning and nearly a year of weaving 3 hours on Sundays, this epic project has finally come to an end. I admit, I was sad to finish the weaving part, but I was thrilled to see all the panels come together, and the worms matched up!
Since April of 2023, I have been able to weave for about 3 hours (which amounted to a 15-inch block) on most Sundays. It's been good exercise, and a welcome meditation.
Warp: 10/2 American Maid Cotton
Weft: indigo blue wool for pattern weft and 20/2 American Maid cotton for tabby
Reed: 12-dent, threaded 2 per dent
Here is the log of my weekly progress weaving each week:
Half-way through Panel #4, I ran out of warp, so there was a break around Christmas while I re-grouped and re-warped and got things set up again to continue weaving on Panel 5. Rather than a setback, that turned out to be a good thing, as it solved some tension problems with the warp.
I also kept track of bobbin changes, so I'd know how many bobbins to wind per panel, and how far I could weave with a white cotton or a blue wool bobbin:
Any problems that came up were solve-able.
Sewing the panels together was easier than I thought. I was afraid I'd have more trouble making matching the patterns from panel to panel, but that turned out to be easier than expected. I did not hand stitch the panels together, line by line. In the weaving, I planned for about 1/2 inch overlap between the panels (about 12 threads). That method worked out well for the towels I made last year.
I went down 1 side with a zigzag stitch, covering the selvedge edge. On the back side, I used a straight stitch to sew down the selvedge on the reverse side. I may still go over that with a zigzag as well. We shall see.
The circles are the cucumber slices, if you haven't made that connection yet. This photo is from the "summer" side, with more white than blue.
Here's the blue side with a shot of the worms, which were so much fun to weave.
It all looks great so far! The seams essentially disappeared once it was wet-finished.
I wonder how much it will shrink with the wet-finishing? Maybe 3 panels would have been enough for our double bed?
I had planned for the blocks to be 12 inches square (12-dent read with 24 warp strings per inch), but they came out 12x15 inches, so the cucumbers are a little long, cut on the bias, so to speak. I'm not sure what else I could have done to make it square -- I was using a tabby thread that was already half the size of the warp strings and beating as hard as I dared. The octagons are elongated, too. It's ok -- I'm still happy with the outcome.
The measurements
Each panel is about 22 inches wide after wet-finishing. On the loom, under tension, it was about 25 inches with a temple. Off loom, each panel was about 23-1/2 inches wide.
Each panel was about 105 inches long as measured on the loom. After wet-finishing and hems, they are about 96 inches long.
Dimensions BEFORE wet-finishing: 93 inches wide x 105 in. long
AFTER wet finishing: 88 in. wide x 96 in. long
As a reminder, here is the antique coverlet (for study purposes) I purchased in the same/similar pattern:
Here are all the previous posts on this project:
