Saori Tea Towels

Remember when I warped up the loom to make tea towels? Well, they were finished a few weeks ago and they turned out amazing!  Three towels from about 80" of warp and two will be gifts.  The little bit of scrap was cut into two squares for coasters and the little tiny scrap was saved for the weaving scrapbook. (yeah right! Who has time for a scrapbook? let's be honest with ourselves and call it what it is - a scrap pile)

The warp was done with unmercerized cotton and warped up with one warp in each heddle.  The reed is 5 dents per cm and it was a wide warp at 20".

Working with cotton, I started with a simple weaving with just stripes.  I did want to see how clasp weft worked with towels, so the last part was clasp.

So the clasp weft worked great.  With a single warp, the double weft was not too heavy.  As part of my style, I like to blend colors and often send two bobbins through.  With the towels, this cased a bit wider fabric.  Usually, that’s fine, but expectations for towels are different and they are supposed to be rectangular.  Or it would make a terrific design feature, Because who says towels have to have straight edges!

with these, I took a chance and just cut them after washing the fabric in the washer. And because I’m impatient, I sewed the edge on a machine and then did a hem, also on the machine. Oh, and after washing, the towels were 15.5 inches wide,  the 20” warp width seemed wide on the loom, but I’m glad It was that width.

they really turned out cute.  Certainly not perfect, which is why the two best will be gifts and I’ll keep the last one to see how it wears.

will I do towels again? Ugh, probably not.  But I LOVED working with the cotton from @gistyarns.  It was hard to cut the towels just because the fabric was so fantastic.  I may do something similar in the future and use the fabric for a nice comfy shirt.