I’ve been wanting to make myself bath towels for quite some time. Throughout the years I’ve experimented with different weave structures and different cottons to see what would work best. I really wanted the towel to have texture so I played a lot with waffle weave, but couldn’t come up with a sample that I wanted to expand into a real towel. A few months back a contributor in one of my Facebook groups, who seemed to be on a hunt for the perfect bath towel pattern as well, suggested using the draft number 47 (page 17) from the A Weaver’s Book of 8 Shaft Patterns by Carol Strickler. Well, it was worth a try.
This weaver wove her towel using 8/4 cotton sett at 12 epi. I decided to weave a sample first. After weaving the sample, I felt the 12 epi was a little too loose. I was also concerned about the length of the floats. I wove the next sample using 15 epi and liked the feel of the towel much better.
Sizing the Towel
I tend to like my towels on the larger size so I used a towel I already had as a guide. This pattern, I expected would pull in some width-wise, but not quite as much as waffle weave. I decided that my towel on the loom would measure 35 inches and I would weave 70 inches in length. I also like larger hems so I wove a 4 inch hem using 8/2 cotton. I kept the 15 epi as my sett. So, in the end, I had 526 warp threads and 1048 weft threads. Word of caution, when weaving, be sure to continuously check your ppi to be sure you’re weaving at 15 ppi. For the first towel I wove, I constantly measured and checked. The second towel I was feeling a little overconfident with my beat and ended up with a towel a bit longer than the first (lesson learned).
Designing the Towel
I’m really a fan of Cayenne. I love this burnt orange color. For this project I paired it with Natural and Charcoal. For the warp I used a division of space of three; 1) solid cayenne, 2) alternating white and charcoal stripes, and 3) two panels of cayenne white and charcoal. Weaving the weft, I included these elements in each of the towels.
I really enjoyed weaving the towels and they turned out perfectly in end. Not sure why I was initially adverse to using 8/4 cotton, but it worked great!
Next time I will either use 10/2 cotton for the hem or pull in the 8/2 cotton a little bit as I weave. There was a little bit of puckering with the hem. Since my daughters love, love, love the towels, I feel like I’ll have many more to weave!
