Cotton Lace Kitchen Towel

One of my sons-in-law made me laugh recently. Here’s the story.

Many years ago, more years than I’d like to admit, I decided to make Roman shades for my daughters’ room. I had some commercial fabric with red and blue flowers on a pale pink background. That was my starting point. I chose yarn to match those colors and chose lace as the weave structure. I wound the warp and started weaving, but the colors just didn’t “sing” the way I had envisioned them. Being a new weaver, I thought they would grow on me. Not so. After 11 yards, the cloth came off the loom and still, no “song.” I was so disenchanted that I folded the fabric and stowed it away. The curtains never came to be.

Fast forward to this past winter when I decided to clear some of my stash. At the time, I was thinking about using yarn that had been on the shelf too long, but my curtain fabric still haunted my linen closet.

Because I had used cotton in a lace weave, this fabric was actually a good candidate for towels. So I put scissors to fabric, cut the yardage into several towels and gave them out to my family. They aren’t pretty–the colors still don’t sing after all these years–but they work as towels.

And this is how my son-in-law made me laugh–my daughter has been using her towel and on laundry day, put it in the wash. Her husband happened to be washing up in the kitchen and looking for something to dry his hands, asked her, “Where’s the good one?”

One weaver’s failed project is another family’s “good one!”

Now I am working on towels in the same weave structure, but with colors that work much better than my original ones. Can you hear the song?