May 24

May 24 Landis Valley Linen Weave Kitchen Towels

This was my first attempt at hand weaving kitchen towels. It was on my mind as something I wanted to try to weave and this was finally the perfect opportunity. I selected 8/2 cotton by Maurice Brassard for both the warp and the weft. I chose cotton so the towels could be easily machine washed and dried. The color of the warp is charcoal and the weft colors are dark lime, burnt orange, and O-101 (white). I used a single weft color for each towel. The Brassard 8/2 worked perfectly.

Landis Valley Linen Woven Hand Towel Pattern / warporweft.com

Landis Valley Linen Weave on page 21 of the green copy of the Davison book looked ideal for kitchen towels because it includes a zigzag style border all the way around. I wove the bottom and top borders for 5 inches on each side with approximately 18 inches of the diamond pattern in the middle. I opted to leave the zigzag on the sides with only one repeat, which was an wide before finishing. I am really pleased with how these turned out.

Handwoven Towels Landis Valley Linen Weave / warporweft.com

When finished weaving, I used the sewing machine to zigzag at the edge of the two end towels and washed them in the washing machine and dryer. There was a fair amount of shrinkage - approximately 2 - 3 inches in both length and width. I also noted that although the towels were from the same warp and were the same width when they came off the loom, there was slight variation in the amount of shrinkage - one towel was 15.25 inches, while another towel is 15.5 inches wide. After washing, I hand hemmed both sides of each towel with an invisible seam. I waited until after the towels were washed to hem the ends so that the seams didn't hold wider than the body of the towel.