towels

How many times have you heard “wash your hands” lately?

Probably more than you can count! Why not turn this routine into a joy with beautiful, handwoven towels? This free project is perfect for both beginner and experienced weavers, offering a fun and creative way to brighten your home while practicing essential weaving skills.

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Why Make Handwoven Towels?

If we’re washing our hands frequently, we might as well enjoy the process! These towels are practical, vibrant, and customizable. With bright colors and soft cotton yarn, they’re designed to bring happiness to your daily routine.

This project is beginner-friendly, but you’ll need to know how to warp, thread, and set up your rigid heddle loom for plain weave. If you’re still learning, check out my Woe to Go! Beginner Rigid Heddle Weaving class. for step-by-step guidance.

Both towel designs are quite adaptable and can be varied in many ways. I give you some ideas on how to go about this in the video class.

Tools and Materials Needed

Here’s what you’ll need to get started:

*Rigid heddle loom 24” weaving width or wider (yes, you can also use a smaller loom with the understanding that your towels will be narrower than mine).

*1 x 10 dent heddle (or a 7.5 – 8 dent heddle if using Sugar n Cream yarn)

*3 stick shuttles longer than the width of the project. (For the first towel we are weaving with 3 weft colours).

*1 pickup stick longer than the width of the project (additional pick up stick to aid transfer of pick up is optional – a stick shuttle can be substituted.

*Reed and threading hook

*A sewing machine and serger are very handy for hemming but not essential

I used a beautifully soft and lofty cotton to weave these towels on my rigid heddle loom. We will be using the same warp for both towels, but as you can see, using different techniques makes the towels wonderfully varied in how they look.

If you’re in Australia, my yarns were from Bendigo Woollen Mills in the following: Pomegranate, Peacock and White cotton 10ply. But, if you need substitutes, here are my recommendations:

Sugar n Cream in red

Sugar n Cream in white

Sugar n Cream in aquamarine

I Love this Cotton

Knit Picks Dishie

Two Towels, One Warp

Both towels use the same warp setup, but different techniques make each unique. This project includes a downloadable PDF with warp calculations, weaving instructions, and pickup sequences.

Wash-your-hands-towels-1 Download

Towel 1: Plaid Design

The first towel uses the same color sequence for the weft as the warp, creating a vibrant plaid pattern. This is a great opportunity to practice frequent color changes by cutting and introducing new colors.

Key features:

Plain weave borders.
Simple pickup design in the center.
Alternating weft colors (4 picks each color).

Tips for Beginners:
If you’re new to using pickup sticks, check out my pick up tutorial for a quick guide before starting this towel.

Towel 2: Classic White

The second towel uses white yarn for the entire weft, with some simple pick up floats, creating a clean and elegant look.

Want to experiment? You can modify these designs with different color sequences or patterns to make them your own.

Color Handling Options

Cut and Start: Cut each color after 4 picks (as in Towel 1).
Carry Colors Up: For tighter color changes (e.g., 2 picks per color), carry the yarn along the edges instead of cutting.

Watch and Weave

This project includes step-by-step video instructions to guide you through the weaving process. Download the free printable PDF, follow along with the videos, and start weaving these beautiful towels today.

This free class is also available at my Online Weaving School.

Share Your Creations!

I’d love to see your finished towels! Tag me on Instagram so I can share your work in my stories. And if you enjoyed this project, please share it with fellow weavers!

Have questions or comments? Drop them below—I’d love to hear from you.

Until next time…

Happy Weaving!

It’s bound to happen. That moment when you realise there is a little or large or even gaping hole in one of your hand wovens.

I love using my hand woven towels in the kitchen. I mean, if you’re spending a lot of time doing menial tasks ie. dishes, you might as well be doing it with something special and beautiful.

We don’t have a dishwasher, and with 6 family members we tend to wash and dry a lot of dishes every day.

The first time it happened, I may have gasped, my eyes may have goggled a little and my head may have drooped. Just for a moment. But, one thing you learn through being a parent is to not be too precious about your material possessions. It’s likely they will get broken or damaged at some point. I would still rather use things than have them sit in a drawer somewhere.

Towel 1 was the worst with one large hole and one small hole.

So, anyway, two of my not very old, fairly recently finished hand woven towels had, shall we diplomatically say, “person inflicted holes”? Likely pierced by a sharp knife in the act of drying it?

I began contemplating what could be done about the said holes and I thought of the wonderful old art of darning, something our Grandmother’s did all the time and my own mother avoided like the plague. Needless to say, this art was not passed on to me. But, since having children, I’ve done my fair share of mending clothes with usually passable results.

Towel 2 was in better shape with just one smaller hole.

The trick with handwovens is to try to trace the original path that the broken or snapped threads took. Easier to do if you have a good understanding of the weave structure you used, but you can still get on alright by observing the threads that are still intact.

Once you’ve observed the pattern of the threads and determined how many warp threads and how many weft threads are broken, you can start tracking where these threads should have been and try to follow their original path.

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Using a needle (I used a tapestry needle) and matching the original threads as closely as possible, (I wasn’t able to do this as I had run out of the original threads, but I found some pretty good matches amongst my stash) start your thread 1 -2 inches out from the hole. Doing this also usually allows you to follow the path of the original thread up until it reaches the hole where it is broken.

It doesn’t matter whether you start weaving in warp of weft threads first. After you have woven through and past the hole (hopefully in a pattern very similar to the one that was broken) you continue to follow the pattern with the needle for another inch or two out the other side. Leave tails hanging out from where you began and finished.

This technique worked really well for my smaller holes. Although I didn’t get an exact copy of the original pattern, I was able to replace the broken threads in a way that didn’t look terrible!

For the gaping hole I needed to try something else. Subtle mending was not going to suffice for this one, there were many severed warp and weft threads and the gap was wide. I tried. I really did. But it was ugly – perhaps uglier than before I started trying to replace the threads.

At this point I decided to embrace the “Visible Mending” movement. I didn’t have any matching fabric, having woven just this one towel with those particular threads and structure. I hunted in my scraps and samples pile and came out with a couple of pieces that were acceptable – at least they had the same colours!

I cut out the patch sizes I needed – one for each side of the hole and serged the borders of each piece. I used the wonderful sewer’s helper Heat n Bond to attach a patch to either side of the hole. When cool, I machine zigzagged around the edges. Not perfect, but at least I don’t have to look at my botched mending job anymore and the towel is functional in my kitchen once again!

Once I completed the surgeries, I put the towels through a hot (60 degrees celsius) machine wash, dried and ironed. I cut all the tails (including the original leftover broken threads) as close to the fabric as possible, without cutting the actual fabric. Don’t accidentally snip too close and undo all your hard work!

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I’m very grateful to have children who wash and dry dishes for me, even if there are occasional accidents!

Until next time….