Sunny Garden Towels

Please don’t think of sampling tie-ups, wefts, and finishes as a chore. It’s a delightful opportunity to end up with a pile of towels with distinct—but related—designs.

About this Project

Designer Robin Lynde’s garden always includes brilliant sunflowers growing next to equally stunning cosmos. Those beautiful blooms gave her the inspiration to design these towels. She chose two color-and-weave drafts from Strickler because the motifs look like flowers—and they would provide tie-up and treadling variations from a single straight-draw threading. She set about sampling yarn colors and warp color order, and eventually found a combination that worked. While this project produces eight towels, only two of them are identical. Five towels use a tie-up that makes spiky flowers (like her sunflowers) and three use a tie-up that results in pinwheels (like her cosmos). She also tried out solid and striped weft variations. For finishing, she used a hemstitched fringe on one towel, and hemmed the others (even experimenting with a finer weft yarn for some of those hems).

Contents

• Project Instructions PDF
• Towel WIFs

Details

Structure
Twill with color-and-weave.

Equipment
8-shaft loom, 23" weaving width; 12-dent reed; 6 shuttles.

Yarns
Warp: Tubular Spectrum 5/2 mercerized cotton (2,100 yd/lb; Lunatic Fringe Yarns), Gold, 738 yd; 5 Yellow Red, 648 yd; 10 Yellow Red, Butter Yellow, 5 Yellow, and 10 Yellow, 576 yd each.

Weft: Tubular Spectrum 5/2 mercerized cotton, Gold, 196 yd; 5 Yellow Red, 620 yd; 10 Yellow Red, 402 yd; Butter Yellow, 441 yd; 5 Yellow, 542 yd; 10 Yellow, 631 yd. 10/2 cotton in coordinating color for hems, 201 yd.

Dimensions
Width in the reed: 22 ¹⁰⁄₁₂".
Woven length: (measured under tension on the loom) 271" or about 34" per towel.
Finished size: (after wet-finishing and hemming) eight towels, 20" × 26"–29" each.

Left to right: Towels 1 & 5, Towel 2, Towel 3. Photos by Matt Graves Left to right: Towel 4, Towel 6. Left to right: Towel 7, Towel 8.

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Visit our help article for more information on WIFs, including what they are and how to use them.