A Collection of Tea Towels.

Tea towel and hand towel

I like to weave tea towels to give away as presents.  I enjoy designing stripes for the towels and trying different weave structures. Here is one of my own tea towels hanging up in my kitchen ready for use alongside a handwoven linen hand towel.

I use cottolin which is a mixture of linen and cotton.  It makes a very durable and absorbent tea towel. Most of my tea towels are woven in plain weave sett at 20 ends per inch.

 Three hand towels in waffle
weave and one tea towel. 

  I have woven many tea towels recently and have just finished four blue checked towels. I always weave a hanging tag to match the towels on my Swedish band loom.  See the YouTube video:  Five ways of weaving narrow bands.

weaving a tag for the tea towels

Matching tags

I enjoy designing tags to fit the colours of the woven towels.  The tags are woven in the same cottolin as the tea towels.  This tag has 29 warp ends and is 13 mm in width. In my book,  The Art of Simple Band Weaving, there are over 150 designs for simple woven bands.

Towels for gifts

Here is my collection of tea towels!  I have been experimenting with different weave structures: a variation of pebble weave and false damask.  They dry dishes very well and make very good presents.

The hand towels with the wavy design featured
in Vav Magasinet  1/11

The inspiration for the colours for this set of towels came from the Mediterranean. The two handtowels with the wavy pattern are featured in Vav Magasinet 1/1, pages 50 - 51.  I also designed the woven tag for the handtowels and won second prize in the handtowel competition.

Ready for weaving.

I have just put a new warp on my loom to weave some more towels. There is something very satisfying about seeing the warp stretched so neatly on the loom ready for weaving to start.

Starting to weave.

Two shuttles are used to make an interesting pattern.  For this towel there are three white picks and then one red pick.

Happy weaving!

Durham Weaver
June 2014