Weaving Turned Twill Towels

Recently, I had the pleasure of receiving a weaving commission from my Instagram friend @stephiepeterson. Stephanie is a quilter but had done some weaving in the past and had a set of towels she loved so much, she decided she wanted more. A while back, we discovered that she lived in the same part of Michigan where I grew up and we had long been planning to meet up sometime when I was in town.

Stephanie sent me some ideas of towels she liked and colors. I then created several examples of patterns with color combinations in my weaving software and sent them to her. We had settled on a plan and not long before I was to start the towels, I found a design I thought she would like even more. I tweaked it a bit and sent it to her. That was the one!

These were a joy to weave. They are easy and fast to treadle. In order to help my feet find the correct grouping of treadles (the squares vs. the little rectangular white divisions between them), I tied a potholder loop to treadle 1 and 5. My feet could easily feel which treadle I needed to start each sequence.

After I completed Stephanie's towels, I had the opportunity to meet her in early June and deliver them to her myself! We had a fantastic conversation and lunch! I am so glad I had the opportunity to meet her and to weave these towels for her!

I decided to do another set of towels by tying onto the previous warp. I had never done it before and found it a bit intimidating. After tying the first 100 knots or so, you get a technique going. :)

Learning Experience: As you can see, I did not allow enough waste for my new tie on when I did my warp calculations and my second towel (the one with black weft) came out more as a 1/3 of a towel! Right now I am just keeping it on hand as a sample, though I may be moved to turn the fabric into something else later. :)