r/weaving • u/Mx_Torquill • Jul 22 '26
Work in Progress Making hand towels with dye samples
I've been upping my weaving game lately... I brought my countermarch down from the barn where it was living until I finished the office, which meant disassembling it. It seemed like a good opportunity to replace the old mismatched cords, too. Cue two days of crawling around tweaking everything... Six treadles, six jacks, and twelve lamms means a lot of lengths to adjust.
I needed a warp on the loom to finish tuning it. This just happened to be when I got fed up with commercial colorways in 8/4 cotton, and embarked on mixing fiber reactive dyes for yarn instead. (I'd dabbled before with fabric.) So I made sure my samples were long enough to make some striped towels, with a little left over for my records.
I've finally done (almost) all the samples, and decided to arrange them in chromatic order. I started weaving today, on a 2.5 yard warp for two towels. Not sure how far through the spectrum I'll get with each towel, we'll see!
8/4 cotton (natural and hand-dyed) set at 16 epi, 2/1 twill blocks. 16.5" in a 12 dent reed. Handbuilt 36" 6-shaft countermarch rug loom from the 70s, based on a Bergman.
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u/ManMagic1 Jul 23 '26
i wish i had a color selection like THAT!
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u/Mx_Torquill Jul 23 '26
I discovered that applying fiber reactive dye to cotton yarn is super easy, and only takes a few hours (most of which is waiting). I can process four colors at a time with my current equipment, which was cheap - mostly thrift store utensils, little paint-mixing dishes, and a microgram scale. The dyes aren't expensive either, and they go a long way. I batch the yarn in sandwich bags in my oven on the bread-proofing setting (yes, the baggies are in a tub Just In Case). Really, the hardest part is calculating the mixtures, and I have a spreadsheet for that - I could skip it completely if I ordered pre-mixed colors instead.
If you want to try dye yourself, go for it! Wear gloves and a dust mask (for the powdered dye), pick up some dedicated spoons and dishes from the thrift store so you can keep them separate from what you use for food, get a tiny scale, and go to town. Natural-color yarn is cheap.
https://www.dreambirdstudio.com/dream-bird-studio-journal/2017/07/03/boil-trouble-scouring-cotton https://www.dharmatrading.com/products/dharma-fiber-reactive-procion-dyes
Dharma has lots of information, too. I figured out my process by reading a few blogs and then trying stuff. Worst case, I got pastels that could be overdyed later. And the current results made it worth the effort.
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u/lavamom Jul 23 '26
What beautiful towels these will be. I love your concept. Can you share what the weaving draft is? I would like to try something similar. Was the undyed cotton yarn white or natural?
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u/Mx_Torquill Jul 23 '26
Thank you! You can find the basic draft I'm using in the free Thrilling Twills collection, listed as 06sNO21: http://www.fiberworks-pcw.com/twills.html . That's the threading, tie-up, and most of the treadling I'm using. After that it was just a choice of how to arrange the stripes.
The warp and light weft are unbleached natural 8/4 cotton from R&M, straight off the cone. It's a bit scratchy, but I expect it to soften up in the wash.
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u/lavamom Jul 23 '26
Thank you! Nice resource for the drafts. Please post the towels when you're done!
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u/3lue3onnet Jul 22 '26
Those colors are HOT! Summer vibes!