Final wave of cotton tea towels for the holidays

With Christmas rapidly approaching and the Nerd's family rule of "no gifts for adults ... but homemade gifts are OK" in play, it was time to ramp up my production of cotton tea towels for gifts. 

This time I was serious.  Rather than the usual 2.5 yard warp to produce 2 towels, I warped my loom with 5 yards to create 4 towels out of a single warp.  Not only that, I was making not 2 sets of towels, but 4 sets of towels - - 8 towels altogether - - in two different colour combinations.  Yes, I was kicking the towel production up a notch.

The equipment was my trusty Kromski Harp rigid heddle loom with a single 8-dent reed.  For this batch of towels I chose the old standby Lily Sugar n' Cream white cotton as the base, with Lily Sugar n' Cream Twists in a denim blue for one set, and Lily Sugar n' Cream "Moondance" Ombre for the other set.  Sugar n' Cream is the yarn called for in Angela Tong's online Craftsy class that is the source of the pattern for these towels, and although it is a little harsher to the touch when it first comes off the loom than the beautiful Cascade Luna Peruvian cotton I have used on some towels, I still love the way this yarn weaves up.  Plus, the Sugar n' Cream is a super-absorbent yarn - - the Nerd and I have been enjoying our new kitchen towels made from this same cotton (in white with green twists for contrast). 

I found that working with the longer warp for each set was pretty much the same as working with the shorter warp, but I had tension issues on one end of each set that resulted in my stripes having a tendency to have varying widths from one end to the other, if left uncorrected.  I suspect that I tightened up one side of my warp too much, or that it was deviating because for some reason (i.e. bad math) I set up my warp off-centre for each set of towels.  The tension issue was readily corrected, however, and the finished products did not look too hinky or uneven. 

Here's the blue set in progress:

And the purple set:

I was pleased with the finished products and the towels given as gifts were very well received (even though people initially thought they were placemats).  I was also pleased with the efficiency of using the longer warp to create more finished items, and I will definitely take advantage of this in the future.  After all, setting up the warp takes all the time and it is not significantly more labour-intensive to warp 5 yards compared to 2.5 yards.  The weaving is quick, comparatively speaking. 

We still have a set of tea towels left over as only 3 sets of towels were given away (2 sets as Christmas presents and 1 set as a thank-you gift).  Now I have to start thinking of what the 2015 towel pattern will be, as the 2014 pattern has been almost done to death.  It's such a classic pattern, though, that I may cheat and run off a few more sets of this pattern to use up some of my leftover Cascade and Sugar n' Cream yarn.