Backstrap Towels

I want to make some more towels with cotton yarn. I use the thick Sugar N Creme and Peaches and Cream yarns. The towels are part of my apprenticeship as a weaver.

Above are the sticks I'll be using for my backstrap loom. I plan to make two towels. The ends tied to the loom bars will be twined for a finished selvedge. I'll weave halfway through and turn the loom around and weave the other half. Then I'll cut in the middle. The towels will have three finished edges. The last edges will be hemstitched and fringed.


Using 24 inch hardwood sticks clamped to the chairs, the warp is wound at 56 inch. You can see a metal box that was jammed between the chair and table to keep the spacing constant. The tight continous warp wants to pull the chairs together. The sett will be 10 warp per inch. There is 6 inch of variegated pastel, then 4 inch of white in middle, and 6 inch more of pastel. The finished width will be 16 inch. And I put safety strings to hold the cross.


I'll twine my piece tomorrow, so I just rolled up the warp with the flat sticks and put it in the bag. I love this part of backstrap weaving. I was actually going to use a rigid heddle loom, but my heddle is missing! It's nice to have a backstrap loom as a backup loom!

Have a good day!