Summer Sorbet Towels

Weave these towels because they’re simply lovely as designed, or customize them based on the weather where you live.

About this Project

After seeing the temperature blankets in which knitters work rows for every day of a year using a color that symbolizes the temperature for that day, designer Barbara Mitchell wondered how she could interpret the same idea without tying up her loom for an entire year. She decided to shorten the time frame to one month, and to weave temperature towels instead of a blanket. The result memorializes the daily high temperature where she lives, and the colors she assigned ended up reminding her of fruit sorbets, or of cabanas lined up along a beach in summertime. She used a variation of basketweave, which creates warp and weft floats that give the finished towels a wonderful texture.

Contents

• Project Instructions PDF
• Towel WIFs

Details

Structure
Basketweave variation.

Equipment
4-shaft loom, 25" weaving width; 12-dent reed; 2 shuttles; 8 bobbins.

Yarns
Warp: 8/2 cotton (3,360 yd/lb; Maurice Brassard; Jane Stafford Textiles), Fuchsia, 230 yd; Orange and Apricot, 350 yd each; Pale Limette, 420 yd; Limette, 280 yd; Butter and Lilac, 210 yd each; Lime, 140 yd.

Weft: 8/2 cotton, Fuchsia, 247 yd; Orange, 104 yd; Apricot, 125 yd; Pale Limette, 780 yd; Butter, 84 yd; Limette, 340 yd; Lilac, 90 yd; Lime, 194 yd.

Dimensions
Width in the reed: 24 ⁴⁄₁₂".
Woven length: (measured under tension on the loom) 144" (36" per towel).
Finished size: (after wet-finishing and hemming) four towels, about 20½" × 28½" each.

Left to right: Towel 1, Towel 2. Photos by Matt Graves Left to right: Towel 3, Towel 4.

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