Christmas time has come and gone, again! And another Christmas is fast approaching!!
I love making towels as gifts or small market items, whether they be tea towels, hand towels or face/wash cloths. I have not yet tried weaving a bath towel, but it defeats the objective of why I choose to weave towels.
The fun to be had by weaving small towels is that you can plan to do as many, or as few, as you like, and you can play around with different patterns and colours during the making thereof, and basically make sample weaves. If you want to make a large piece this is a good way to try it out as a smaller sample pieces!
It is unlike weaving a big/long piece of fabric – I end up getting rather bored with large pieces, so weaving small towels suits me well.
I love playing around with colour in different variations and various treadlings.
I was involved in 2 small Christmas markets at the end of 2019 (the first since Middelburg days!) so I decided to make towels and facecloths for the markets. I managed to sell a few so I can replace my stock with a clear conscience, and not unnecessarily use DH’s CC to buy more yarn! I have also sold towels at the weaving exhibitions I have taken part in, and this has helped too.
If I see a pattern I would like to experiment with before I do a larger project, a towel is the perfect way to do it. Then I can decide on colours, yarns and whether the pattern is suitable for its intended final use or not.
You can also make towels in new weaving structures that you have been exposed to our read about!
The next towels were from a pattern in Handwoven called Circles and Squares. It was a really fun weave. I dyed the colours myself and I am very pleased with the result. Most of them were gifted, and they were well-received!
I did an online course on the Overshot structure in 2020. I put on a very long warp, and after I had finished the runner and 8 placemats, I used the remaining warp to weave some small guest towels.
I bought a very nice Crackle Pattern from Jane Stafford Textiles. I put on a 15m warp and wove 9 towels in Crackle. But then I had had enough of Crackle and rethreaded the warp with 7 different Overshot patterns in each of the blocks between the grey dividing lines. I managed to weave 8 towels in the remainder of the warp! I combined some of them with Overshot potholders as gifts.
At the end of 2020 I took part in a towel exchange. Because we were doing it for the end of the year (Christmas) I designed a towel in Christmas colours. The exchange was only finalised a few months into 2021 so my Christmas towels were not so appropriate at that time! I hope the recipient will use it at Christmas though!
This was a pattern I bought from Gist Yarns, woven on a linen warp with hand-spun cotton and linen as weft.
These towels were woven with Chardonnay ‘silk’, a man-made viscose-type fibre. They have also ask been gifted!
