Eight Shaft Tea Towels

January is synonymous with tea towel weaving month for me, so very satisfying after the holiday season.  I take the time while weaving a straightforward pattern to make sure my posture at the loom is correct.  Weaving tea towels is  comfortable enough for me that I can concentrate on my throw and really think about technique, balance and comfort.

To that end I wanted to put on tea towels that used only one weft, so I found a pattern that would give me lots of interest without any colour changes.  I found this lovely 8 shaft Scandinavian pattern called Korndräll.  FYI  dräll in Swedish means twill.

I put on a 535 end warp in white 2/8 cotton and put enough warp on the loom to weave 6 tea towels.  Working towards my ‘always years’ resolution (because I make this one every year) to use up odds and sods of weft, I wove each in a different colour.  I know I have enough weft to finish a 36 inch long tea towel if I have more than 2 ounces on the tube of cotton.

The pattern really shows off the warp colours and is the same on the reverse side.

Here they are just off the loom.

Ready to stabilize the hems and wet finish.

All done.....you’ll notice that there are only 5 in this photo; and that is because the wine red towel ran like crazy.  The white warp still has a slight pink tinge to it even after soaking in warm water with dye catchers.  Lesson learned, no red and white; and yet another tea towel for me!  Another lesson learned is that this pattern has quite substantial width take up; I put 22 inches of warp on the loom and after tumble drying I ended up with 16 1/4 inches of width.  The upside of this is that these are beautifully lofty absorbent towels.

I have already pulled the warp for my second batch of 4 tea towels using what was the same colours that were left over from the wefts on these towels, minus the wine red.  I did however, take the pattern and made each square larger and made the warp 601 threads,  I am still debating about weft.

The final garden shot is not a living plant at all.  This is all that is left of my lovely Himalayan Birch tree that we had to remove last autumn.  What a lovely reminder of a lovely tree.