Handtowel in 8 shaft point twill

Cottolin Handtowel 

If you follow my blog, you will realise that I love weaving towels.

Cottolin is great for tea towels but is also very hard wearing and absorbent for handtowels. Here is a pattern for towels that i finished last month.

Warp: cottolin in dark blue, light blue, white and natural
Weft: natural cottolin

Sett: 24 dpi

Weave structure: Point twill on 8 shafts.  I used an extra shaft for the selvedge but a floating thread for the selvedge is fine.

Please note that using the point twill structure the colour stripes do not line up with the twill.  I like this as it seems to add a dynamic quality to the design.

Warp 

Dark blue     16         12            12         12            12                Central blue section can be adjusted.
Natural                20                         16                          20         I used 152 ends.
White                              2     2                   2      2
Pale blue                             4                           4


You can adjust how wide you wish the handtowel to be by altering the central dark blue section.

I used 152 ends for the centre section.  This is shown on the Weave Drawdown in turquoise blue although fewer ends are shown so that the pattern will fit onto the page.
You can use as many dark blue threads as you wish for the centre area depending upon your chosen overall width of the hand towel. The sett is 24 epi so you will need to count how many warp ends you want in the dark blue.

Total number of warp ends: 424

Weave Drawdown

eight shaft point twill

Before washing                                      After washing

Width:   17.5 inches     44.4 cm                        Width: 16 inches  40.6 cm

This pattern uses a single colour in the weft.  The length of the handtowel can be adjusted easily.
Remember to weave the first and the last 10 picks in 16/2 cotton.  This will make the hem less bulky.

Close up  of the pattern.

Here is a close up of the two striped areas.  As you can see the point twill is off set in one area.  This adds an extra dynamic to the design although I have to admit that it was a mistake. I meant to have both sides of the towel in a regular twill. You can see the difference in the striped patterns on both sides.

The full pattern showing the difference in the striped areas on the left and right. 

The centre dark blue area can be as wide as you wish.

Hanging tag

As usual I wove a hanging tag in cottolin using the same colours as the handtowel.

Here is the pattern.

Warp for hanging tags

Dark blue      6                      6
White                2               2
Pale blue               4       4
Natural                      4

Total number of warp ends: 30
Weft: dark blue

Width of hanging tag: 11mm

woven band and hanging tag

Here is the finished towel alongside a tea towel hanging up in my kitchen.

Happy Weaving!

Susan J Foulkes  1st June 2019