Weaving wedding gifts

I’m weaving kitchen towels for wedding gifts. Warp is linen, weft is cotton. I’m including a small amount of handspun, locally grown linen. It’s from flax that was part of the Rustbelt Fibershed’s first flax crop in their Cleveland Linen Project. I was lucky to be able to help plant and harvest that first crop, and process and spin a little bit of it, too.

The first picture below shows some of the commercial warp on the warping board. The last two pictures show some of the warp on the warping board that includes my own handspun from the Cleveland Linen Project. I had just over 200 yards and so with 7 yard warp I was able to wind 31 ends into the warp. So in the last two photos, the first 31 ends are my linen yarn. The rest is the commercial linen yarn. The commercial yarn is a bit smoother.

I’m using the pattern found in Handwoven Magazine’s most recent edition. It’s called Bespoke Wedding Towels. Bespoke because each towel will have the wedding date coded into it with patterned stripes.