Preparing Hems

 starting 2/16 cotton for hem part of towel

end of hem, beginning of next towel body

Thought I would show how I deal with preparing hems when they are different from the body of the cloth.

For tea towels, in this case 2/16 warp with cottolin weft for the towel body and 2/16 cotton for the hems, I weave about 2.5 inches for the hem in plain weave, creating a cut line between the towels by treadling two picks of twill.  The cottolin is just carried up the side of the hem as you can see in the bottom photo.  

In the upper photo you can see the end of the cottolin with that yarn simply set aside (I put the shuttle down to my left to keep the yarn out of the way of the weaving) and insert the 2/16 into the same shed as the last pick of cottolin.

At the end of the hem for the next towel, I break the 2/16 off and insert the end into the first twill pick for the cottolin.

By not breaking off the cottolin, I save a little time with each weft change, the yarns are overlapped so that everything is secure and the loop of cottolin can be either cut off flush with the cloth or left as a short tail and tucked into the hem when it is sewn.