What an adventure! We are pleased to present the winners of the first Woolery Weave-Off! Inundated with over 75 amazingly beautiful, diverse towels, we struggled to keep judging deadlines, and are still working on washing and folding all the entries for delivery! Next week, we will be delivering them to The Simon House, where they’ll go into ‘starter baskets’ that provide basic household supplies to the ladies moving out into their own housing! Without further ado…
Beginners
Third Place – Susan Hadden – Califon, NJ
Second Place – Susan Harrison – Plano, TX
First Place – Patti Grammatis – Easley, SC
Rigid Heddle
Third Place – Mary Pat Nowakowski – Freeville, NY
Second Place – Mary Dean – Hackettstown, NJ
First Place – Ellyn Zinsmeister – Allen, TX
Color
Third Place – Cathy Kinzie – Owings, MD
Second Place – Susan Kroll – Sequim, WA
First Place – Pat Bullen – Centerburg, OH
Pattern
Third Place – Sue Briney – Powell, OH
Second Place – Lynette Greenwald – Buckingham, PA
First Place – Katie Polemis – Indianapolis, IN
Congratulations everyone, all of your towels are fantastic! We hope you all enjoy your prizes. As a reminder here are the prizes that the winners will receive:
We cannot thank all of you enough – the response has been overwhelming, and the love shown and felt is profound. We look forward to sponsoring this contest again, and working other contests into our rotation! It feels good to give back, and we are delighted that you’re all on board to help out.
“We all do better when we all do better.” ~ Paul Wellstone
thewooleryguy 
thank you for this awesome opportunity to give back to those in need. You guys are the best!
Thank you for submitting your amazing work, Ellyn!
Wow. Well if that isn’t the perfect inspiration to get me to dress my loom and weave up some towels, I don’t know what would be! Have to say that the very first pic in your post did it for me. Never felt drawn to that pattern before, but Susan Haddon’s towel has such sprighliness and a wonderful contrasting texture to her choice of elegant pattern that it makes me yearn to get my fingers on thread again. And then there was the color, all of it spectacular, and the textures and the patterns. Got to get me some cotton stash and get started. What a great idea this was- it makes everyone winners: the weavers, the ladies whose hands get to use these towels, and all the rest of us, who get inspired by it all.
Thank you!
Annie D. Stratton (lapsed weaver)
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That’s fantastic! We love inspiring people to get weaving!
Congratulations to all the winners!
Can you share more information about these pieces, please, such as fiber, sett, pattern, draft, etc?
Hi Jill, since we didn’t create these we can’t help you with all the details but we do know the fiber! Everyone in the contest was required to use our Bluegrass Mills 6/2 cotton https://woolery.com/bluegrass-mills-6-2-cotton-yarn.html
Those towels are fabulous !! But I’m with Jill. I’d like to learn more about the fiber choices, sett, pattern, etc. etc.
Gorgeous work weavers! Warm congratulations to Mary Pat Nowakowski – Freeville, NY – from an Ithaca weaver! I love your use of beige in this fabric, especially with those bright colors! Bonus is there’s no white to stain and get dingy which is pretty wise for sure. 🙂
Reblogged this on The Sheepish Grin and commented:
The first annual foolery.com weave off has some very inspirational towels to drool over!
I second the congrats to Mary Pat Nowakowski – Freeville, NY – from a “neighbor” in Endicott, NY. I don’t have the slightest idea how to weave, but all of the work shared above makes me want to learn!
It must have been very difficult to judge as all of these towels look like First Place winners to me. I am a beginner at Rigid Heddle weaving and made my first towel from the cotton I ordered from you. I thought it was pretty neat until I saw these. I have a lot to learn, wish I had a teacher, but am inspired enough to learn on my own.
We had a fun time judging but it was very difficult because all of the entries were so beautiful!
Beautiful work, all of you. I’ve been eyeing a Rigid Heddle Loom for some time now, and I’m inspired to go for it. Have to finish the rag rugs I have in the works first though!
Hey, folks!
This is Katherine, the gal to whom all of these beautiful towels were sent. We have had a lot of queries about the patterns used, but as we did not request them initially, to do so retroactively would be almost impossible. There are genuinely thousands of free patterns available all over the internet – a quick Google search will turn up anything you want to get started on! Plain weaves, twills, waffle weaves – you name it! All towels were woven with the Bluegrass Mills 6/2 cotton – that is the only consistency. Some ladies shared their color inspiration with us – often a beautiful photo of a flower, a special sweater or quilt – one talented man used his university alma mater colors! Inspiration is EVERYWHERE! We are so happy with the entries received – feel free to email me with any questions you have about the contest – we will absolutely be doing it again!
Katherine
katherine@woolery.com
I would be glad to share the details of my towel.
It was the blue, white and yellow pinwheel pattern. Colors were BGM Blue Salvia, Buttercup and White. The pattern was an 8 shaft pinwheel, which I found online. Each row and column was 8 threads of one color. Warp sett was 20 epi and weft pick was 20 ppi. It was a little hard to beat to 20 ppi, though. I used floating selvedges. There were a lot of ends to weave in but I changed things up on the later towels on the same warp (carrying the blue weft up the side) which reduced the number of ends to weave in. Can’t wait for next year’s contest! And best wishes to the ladies receiving the towels!