Traditional Handtowels in 10 shaft satin

Traditional Hand Towels

Swedish design is so crisp.  I love the clean visual effect of these traditional hand towels. They are easy to weave and of course you can vary the colour by changing the weft.  The weave structure is 10 shaft satin.

The satin is in two blocks: one block is on shafts 1 to 5 and the second block is on shafts 6 to 10. The large squares have 100 warp ends and the narrow stripes at each border have 15 warp ends.

Weave Draft.

Here is the weave draft.

draft for 10 shaft satin weave handtowels

The warp is unbleached 16/2 cotton.  The weft is 16/1 linen in green.  The sett is 48 ends per inch. No floating selvedge is required for this pattern.

Weaving the towels. 

close up of satin on the loom.

Here are the finished handtowels.  I wove them as presents for friends.

Three handtowels

I like this type of weave structure where the warp is one colour and the weft another.  It means that one warp can produce towels in different colours.  I wove one with green linen, one with blue linen and one with yellow linen.

Hanging tag

I wove a hanging tag for each of the towels.  Here is the pattern for the green towel.

closeup of hanging tag 

Linen hanging tag for hand towels. 

Linen handtowel tag

The tag was woven in 16/1 linen in natural and green. The number of warp ends is 51. The tag is 1.5 cm in width.


In the bottom of a drawer I have just found an old Swedish towel which was bought many years ago so I thought that I would add the picture to this blog.  I had been looking for it for some time.  It is a similar pattern to these handtowels but woven in much finer thread.  It is a large square and is suitable for drying dishes or drying hands.

Commercially woven towel bought in Sweden. 

  In January,  I will show a pattern suitable for a four shaft loom for a set of handtowels. Again the warp will be in one colour so the coloured weft can be varied.  I am putting the warp onto the loom today.

Happy weaving

Susan J Foulkes    November 2016