Weaving hand towels: a community ed class!

Have you ever woven cotton yarn into a hand towel to use in your home? This spring I’ve had the joy of teaching people how to do exactly that!

Some students had no experience with weaving, while others had woven before but wanted to try a new type of project. Using pre-warped 16” Ashford rigid heddle looms and a variety of cotton yarns, class attendees left with a handwoven hand towel to use in their home.

What does it take to prepare for a class like this? Well, for the attendees, they just have to show up and be ready to learn. Easy peasy! For the teacher, it’s a bit more involved:

• I create handouts with info on the looms, yarns, project details, and techniques. I also type up ‘instructor notes’ to keep myself on track.
• The loom for each student gets warped before the class. (Warping means all the ‘vertical’ white yarns that you see in the picture get put onto the looms ahead of time. In class the students weave in the weft ‘horizontal’ yarns.) The warping process takes about 1.5 hours per loom.
• All the yarns get purchased and packed along with all the clamps, shuttles, pick-up sticks, scissors, pins, needles, the sewing machine for hems, etc.
• On the day of class there’s about an hour of setup and an hour of clean up.

Even though the warp yarn is all natural colored cotton, there are still endless ways of weaving the weft yarn in to create a fun pattern! Since these classes were held in springtime, I bought yarns in a spring color palette. Folks had the option of weaving either a plain over-under weave or trying a more complicated pick-up stick windowpane pattern using any combination of patterns or colors they wanted. Take a look at the variety of towel designs woven with just 2 pattern and 7 color options!

I brought the sewing machine along to sew the hems, but many chose to knot the fringes on their towels instead. Either option works, though knotted fringes do have a tendency to wear out with very frequent use just because the ends of the strings fray over time. But it does lend a beautiful homemade touch!

When I was learning to weave I never thought I would get to the point of being able to teach others… not only did I feel like I didn’t know ‘enough’ to teach, but I was always the shy kid in school who would rather go live under a rock instead of doing any kind of public speaking. Through teaching my family and friends about weaving I realized I was able to share the joy I find in the craft with others by showing them how to do it too. It is so exciting to teach someone how to use simple tools to turn yarn into fabric and hear them say “oh my gosh, I’m making fabric! This is so cool!”.

Yeah, it really is so cool!

These weaving classes were hosted through the Itasca Area Schools Collaborative and their Community Education program. New classes are held twice a year in a wide variety of topics, and I’ve had a lot of fun teaching through their community ed program.

I also offer individual or small group lessons for specific projects, or can help tailor an intro-to-weaving program for a larger group like I did with the Deer River High School art class students this spring. Get in touch and let’s weave! -Shara