Turned Twill Dishtowels (2024)

April 7, 2024 - No Comments

Pattern: An 8 shaft 3/1 Twill (Turned twill)
Yarns:

Warp: 560 ends, including floating selvedges — 6yds
- Valley Cotton 8/2 unmercerized, in various colours
- Brassard 8/2 unmercerized cotton (“old jeans”)
Weft: Various, from warp yarns and other Valley Cotton 8/2 unmercerized colours

Sett: 24epi

Method: Weaving — multishaft floor loom (Baby Wolf)

Completed: February 24, 2024.

These are the first set of dishtowels to match up with my “emergency” hand towels completed last year. They use the same colours/yarns, but are flat, in turned twill. I had fun playing with the warp/weft dominance flipping in turned twill.

I did struggle a lot with the first towel. If I loosened up the warp (to try to get balanced ppi and epi), I got a lot of skips. I had to have it at pretty high tension to reduce the number of skips. Part way through the second towel, I read about raising the beater so that the warp threads rested on the bottom bar. That worked well — wove like a dream, after that!

Dimensions on the loom:

23.33” wide by 41” (38” plus 2×1.5” hem; the numbers shown below are for the whole towel and hem together))

Dimensions after weaving:

First towel (peach weft):
- Just off the loom: 21.5” x 40.5” (this one was where I realized I was struggling with ppi, so it took a while to figure out how to adjust; it was woven to more than 41” on the loom)
- After wet finishing: 19.5” x 35.5”
Second towel (turquoise weft):
- Just off the loom: 21.25” x 39.75”
- After wet finishing: 19.25” x 35.25”
Third towel (light blue weft):
- Just off the loom: 21.25” x 39”
- After wet finishing: 19.5” x 34.5”
Fourth towel (dark blue weft):
- Just off the loom: 21.5” x 37.875”. (37 7/8”)
- After wet finishing: 19.25” x 33.75”