Fun with Drying Dishes

Finished 15 x 20 inch (38 x 51 cm) dish towels

So. I finished my Space Shawl and a very lacy scarf, and was looking for something different to do. I found a dish towel pattern in one of my weaving books, and off I went. I'd never worked with cotton yarn before, so before I ordered a big shipment from my favorite weaving store, I bought some good old Peaches and Cream cotton yarn. You can find it darn near everywhere, it's cheap, thick, and usually knitted or crocheted into dishcloths of some type.

I grabbed a big cone of white, some colors, and got to work with my pencil and math designing. You'll notice the edges are fluffy/fringey. I left them that way because I didn't want to make hems on my first set, I wanted to see how things would go. I am definitely going to hem my next set, I hated the fringe, it wouldn't stay even and frayed and feathered and just did its own thing. The heck with that. So I need to learn to do hems for my next trick.

The selvedges (sides of the weaving) weren't too bad, cotton has a LOT less give than wool yarns do. It made it easier to control things, although the cotton towels shrank from around 24 inches (61 cm) long to around 20 inches (38 cm) and width wise went from around 18 inches (46 cm) to 15 inches (38 cm). Lots of shrinkage. But the good thing is there are some super warp and weft calculators out there, so I can do the minor math, have them do the major math, and then get an idea of what to expect. Of course washing and drying bring on that shrinkage big time.

Since I bought a bunch of cotton yarn (of course), look forward to more colored varieties of dish towels, until I feel the urge to move on and learn something else. Or run out of the need for dishtowels.

Tie on, header, hemstitching and we're off, weaving!

The gap between the two towels. 10 dent heddle with a worsted weight type cotton. Took about 3 days to do as I figured things out as I went.