I’m excited to finally be able to reveal what I’ve been working away on over the last few months: a set of woven tea towels for my Mum’s birthday!
These turned out so well. 🙂 Not much like the original sample concept I tried back in January … but since then I managed to borrow a table top 4-shaft loom which made these little beauties possible.
I wound the warp in plain white cottolin (a blend of linen and cotton):
These long threads go onto the loom, winding onto the back beam:
I made the raddle myself out of a bit of spare timber, and some nails. It’s a bit shonky, but it did the trick!
Once the warp is wound on, each of those threads needs to be individually threaded through the heddles (the white vertical strings). When I pull the levers, different sets of heddles go up, making different patterns on the surface of the cloth.
Once the heddles are done, it’s time to sley the reed (cue husband giggling insanely — he think all these weaving terms are just made up!). That means pulling each thread through the metal slots, and tying up in groups to the front beam. In the photo above, I’ve started to weave using a bit of spare wool, and you can see that the first threads are starting to spread out evenly across the width of the cloth.
As for the tea towels themselves, first I wove a sample in green, cut it off the loom and wet finished it:
This worked really well, so I then moved on to the colours I wanted for my Mum. Each of the patterns is based on a “Birds Eye” threading, which is a type of twill. It’s easy to make a lot of different diagonal and diamond shapes by varying which of the four shafts I lift up every time I pass the weft thread.
I wet finished these in the washing machine so that the threads would shrink together and lock into place. Then I rolled them with a rolling pin (yes, really!) to soften the fibres and give them a bit of shine.
I found that with each of my tea towels I had to cut them off the loom and adjust the tension of the warp before weaving the next towel. Here is an example of where the tension started to get a little uneven across the width of the towel:
See how the thicker pattern section looks a little puckered? It flattened out after shrinking down, but I think that meant I didn’t get the warp evenly tensioned when I wound it onto the back beam.
The last tea towel I felt much more in my comfort zone, so I tried out an unbalanced twill pattern or two:
Two of the pattern strips look different on the front to how they look on the back. Can you spot them? Clue: they are blue!
I really love how these turned out. They feel lovely in the hand (although my Mum is going to frame them!). I wonder what I shall do with the leftover bit of warp? For now the loom is idle, as I look after sick kiddies and catch up on some work.
I knew I would enjoy weaving: and I’m hooked!
Simple Crafty Life 
So clever they look lovely well done
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Thank you! 😀
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They are fantastic!
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Thank you!
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Those are amazing! I can’t6 believe you actually sat there with a loom and made those! I love them!
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Thanks Jill 🙂
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Hi Jess,
I got to see these beautiful towels yesterday. They are even more stunning in real life than they appear here. They are truly works of art, and such a beautiful gift from your heart and your hands to your mum. She cannot stop raving about them and I don’t blame her.
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Hi Ali,
Thank you so much for taking the time to drop by and pass on such wonderful feedback! I’m so glad you like the tea towels. 🙂
It’s wonderful to be able to make some special every now and then for the people that we love!
Cheers,
Jess
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I love these. Can you share the patterns with me?
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Hi Jill! I think the tea towels were woven using a birds-eye twill tie-up. I used a photocopy from a friend, which I’ve since mislaid, but I recall this was a beginner pattern from a book. 🙂
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Hi,
Is there a website, from where we can order these beautiful hand woven towels ?
Thanks for your assistance
Kind regards, Daniel
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Hi! Thank you for the compliment, but I gave these as a gift and I haven’t made any others since then. My loom is all packed up to go to a new location, though, where I may get more of a chance to play with my weaving!
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Hello, the Towels look really great. I´m beginning with weaving and after finishing my scarf, I want to test towels from 22/2 Cottolin. I`m not sure about the right reed. So I would like to know how thick youre yarn is and what kind of reed you use.
Best wishes Sandra
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Hi Sandra, thanks for visiting! I’m sorry I can’t remember what what reed I used on these, as I borrowed the loom from a friend, and it has seen since gone back to the owner. I hope you’ve worked out a good reed to match up with your Cottolin!
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I love your towels! How many ends per inch did you use? I have to cottolin that I am looking forward to weaving towels with. I might steal your idea.
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It’s been a very long time since I wove these towels! I would use 20 epi for twill towels in 8/2 cotton or 22/2 cottolin (sometimes also labelled 8/2 cottolin). If you want a softer towel, you could even try 18 epi, but go ahead and sample to see what happens when they shrink in the wash!
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