A Collaborative Towel Project

I just hemmed 34 towels in two days, and I did lots of other things, too. Twenty of those towels were delivered right away to the weaver, Jon, and the other 14, which I wove, were hung to dry on the line - some of which are here.

Jon and I beamed the old loom in January with a very long warp for towels. The plan was for each of us to pick away at it until the warp was done. After he began and then was away for awhile, I wove what I thought was 8 or 10 towels.

He continued through March and April, and cut off the warp last Saturday. I was glad he had the amazing experience of unwinding the front beam into his lap and then unrolling the very long warp on the studio floor.

It made a few passes back and forth, and then he separated the towels by cutting them very carefully and stacking them. Over to me for the hemming.

I've never been crazy about using a sewing machine, and even less about hand sewing. But if I'm going to weave towels I need to hem well. After a few thousand hems, I'm getting to be not bad. I've never met a sewing machine that lacked a bit of personality, but once I get going into the stack of hemming it can actually be hard to stop. The Zen of Hemming. Just like weaving. :-)

Towels are so fun for experimenting and feeling carefree with crazy ideas. I won't do that with blankets, as I've probably emphasized already, but towels are a little test piece for a new idea or something. They all end up selling anyway.

Thank you, Jon, for a very enjoyable collaborative towel project. (We collaborated on the blog photos, too.) I look forward to more weaving fun together!