The Stash Buster Kitchen Towels

In this video, I’m weaving the perfect stash buster kitchen towels. Sometimes, when I start a project, I need lot’s of research and drafting before I’m satisfied with the pattern. This time, the pattern came to me, begging to be woven! I might be exaggerating a bit, but the truth is, when I looked at my yarn stash, I immediately knew what I wanted to make out of it!

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Long story short, I needed to start weaving dishtowels to prepare for the holiday season. Let’s just say that many people in my family are expecting to receive towels on Christmas! When I got to my stash of 8/2 cotton, I realized that I didn’t have that much left. Surely not enough to weave all of the towels that I needed to be weaving! But at the same time, all the colors of the yarn that I had left just seemed right together. I couldn’t go to the yarn store right away to buy some new yarn and it was alright this way. I could reduce my stash!

The Yarn

I’m using 8/2 cotton from Maurice Brassard for the warp of this project. Here are the exact color names:

-Naturel (natural) (LEC-Y100)

-Olive Foncé (dark olive) (LEC-Y8266)

-Rouge Vin (red wine) (LEC-Y5115)

-Sierra (brown) (LEC-Y1391)

-Jeans (navy blue) (LEC-Y4271)

-Orange brûlé (burnt orange) (LEC-Y8265)

They are all available on the Woolery’s website: https://woolery.com/maurice-brassard-cotton-yarn-8-2.html?aff=214 When I look at those cones of yarn, I get reminded of all the past projects that I have woven. With the green (dark olive) and the red wine, I wove Christmas dishtowels last year. With the natural and orange, I did the warp of my 8 dishtowels on my 4-shaft Dorothy loom.

This is a stash buster project! If you have small quantities of cotton lying around in other colors, feel free to use them! I feel like many color combinations could work well for this project. It could even be done with fewer colors, depending on what is in your stash.

The Warping

For the warping, I did the indirect method way. I warped for 4.6m in the hope of weaving 4 towels that will each be 1m (40”) long. I have also warped a width of 60cm (24”) on the loom. This project can be done with any loom that are 24” or wider. Personally, I own a 32” Ashford rigid heddle loom.

Density Talk

I’m taking the opportunity of this project to have a little talk about weaving sett for kitchen towels. I believe that there is no universal recipe and that everybody has their own personal preferences. Still, some combinations are more popular than others! I know that many rigid heddle loom weavers like to use 8/2 cotton and to double it in their 10 DPI or 12.5 DPI heddle. This gives towels that have either 20 ends per inch, or 25 ends per inch. Some might like to double the weft threads as well and some also prefer using other weight of cotton such a 8/4.

My Personal Preference

With this being said, for the weaving of today’s stash buster towels, I will be using my 15 DPI heddle and I will single the threads in the heddle. This means that I will have 15 ends per inch. Right off the bat, we can predict that my towels will be on the thinner side! And truth be told, my family and I like those thin towels. Here’s a picture of the simple cotton dish towels that I wove a few years back. They have been washed a few times and the cotton bloomed very well.

Technical Constraint

There is another reason why I decided to make the stash buster kitchen towels with my 15 DPI heddle. And it is that I wouldn’t have had enough yarn to do it any other way! Once I had finalized my warp pattern, I rapidly realized that I would never have enough 8/2 cotton in the color natural to warp my desired width if I used my 10 or 12.5 heddles. Time was against me and I couldn’t wait until my next trip to the yarn store to start warping. I also couldn’t change my pattern, I loved it to much! So, I committed to weaving with 15 ends per inch.

Nevertheless, I know that not every rigid heddle weaver have access to a 15 DPI heddle. As I’m writing this, only Ashford is making rigid heddle with this DPI. I realized that if someone had another brand of loom, this pattern would not be accessible to them. This is why I will be presenting you the pattern that I did with the 15 DPI and I will be presenting an adapted version of it to use with a 12.5 heddle. The final towels should have the same dimensions, only the pattern is a bit altered. Also, I have not try this second version, and if you do try it, please let me know how it turned out!

The Warp Pattern for 15 EPI

For this pattern, I’m using my 15 DPI heddle and I single the yarn in the heddle. The width of my project is 24” (60cm) wide. This means that I should have 360 ends in total. However, to achieve the pattern the way that I wanted it, I actually ended up with 358 ends.

On the table bellow, you can see the exact thread count of each color. I like to present the thread count in two different rows. The first row says how many ends there are of each colors. Still, when we weave on a rigid heddle loom, we often direct warp our loom. Then, I find it easier to talk in terms of loops pulled out of the heddle. This is why the second row represents loops.

The idea of the pattern is to have a little blocks of colors stripes separated by thick natural stripes. The blocks of natural are a bit more then 1” wide.

The Warp Pattern for 25 EPI

This one is the adapted version. I have changed a few aspects of the pattern to make sure that the final towels will have the same width, which is 60cm (24″). For this one, I would use a 12.5 heddle and I would double the threads in the heddle. This means that I would have 600 ends in total. In the table below, I provide the information in terms of ends and in terms of loops pulled. Still, I would like to precise that when we double the threads, we pull one loop in each slot and one loop in each hole.

The Weaving of Towel #1

For this first towel, I kept things very simple. Even though I was low on my 8/2 cotton supply, I had other resources. I found in my stash some cotton slub in the color natural. It matched just perfectly with my warp! I decided to simply weave with it, without doing anything particular. The cotton slub yarn itself is full of textures and I felt like this was enough to have an interesting towel.

This cotton slub yarn from Maurice Brassard is also available at The Woolery. Here’s where: https://woolery.com/cotton-slub-yarn.html?aff=214

The Weaving of Towel #2

By the time I finished weaving my first towel, I manage to do a little trip to the yarn store. I bought a few cones of 8/2 cotton in natural, This allowed me to do the weft pattern I had in mind since the beginning. For this kitchen towel, I will be doing the same thing that I see in the warp into the weft. The only difference will be the width in between the color stripes. In the warp, I have a bit more than 2.5cm (1”) of natural in between the color stripes. In the weft, I’m weaving 5cm (2”) of natural in between my color stripes. To prepare for the weaving of this towel, I have put a bit of each color of the warp on one half of a shuttle.

First, I wove for about 5cm (2”) of natural. Then, it was time to weave the first color stripes. As my warp pattern starts with green, I will be making the first stripes green as well.  So, for the color pattern, I wove:

-2 picks of green

-2 picks of natural

-2 picks of green

-2 picks of natural

-2 picks of green

Then, I kept on weaving with the natural yarn for another 5cm (2”). After that, I wove the exact same sequence I did with the green, but this time, with the red. I repeated those steps until that I had woven all of the colors. Then, I started with the green again.

This means:

-5cm (2”) natural

-Green color pattern

-5cm (2”) natural

-Red color pattern

-5cm (2”) natural

-Brown color pattern

-5cm (2”) natural

-Blue color pattern

-5cm (2”) natural

-Orange color pattern

-Then I started from the top all over again

In Conclusion

I still have two towels to weave with this warp. Of course, they will be different than the two first! You can expect different fibers and different weft patterns. Stay tune to see the weaving of those other stash buster kitchen towels!

Here’s the post where I finished them: Finishing the Weaving of my Stash Buster Kitchen Towels