Hems

Several people have asked about hem treatments recently so I thought it might be good to discuss them again.  Do a search for 'hems' for more posts.

Above is the place mat warp I was weaving today.*  Click on the photo to biggify so you can see the area of plain weave, the two picks of twill which create a cut line and the heavier body of the mat.  I weave a plain weave hem when the body of the textile is going to be too thick to turn a decent hem.  Since I'm not a big fan of fringes, especially on place mats and tea towels, my preference is always to hem those.

These towels were based on the Spring Bouquet towels I did for Handwoven a year ago.  They are woven from 2/8 cotton at 20 epi with a cotton slub in twill for weft.  The body is, in my opinion, too thick to make a nice hem so the hems were woven in plain weave with 2/16 cotton for weft.  When turning the hems on a striped cloth, try to line up the stripes.  And yes, I hand hem - it works for me.

These towels are woven from 2/16 cotton at 32 epi and a fine singles linen (probably 20's) for weft.  The body of the cloth is much thinner than the above towels and easily turns a hem.  You can see the border at the start where I've not woven the pattern for the hem part but simply repeated a single repeat of each block in a straight progression.  The pattern doesn't run off the end, so to speak, and the towels has a 'border' of the small block repeat on each side and the ends.

That's not to say I don't sometimes let the pattern run off the end.  

As always...it depends.

*I just run the bundled weft up the side of the mat and when hemming that gets tucked into the hem.  And no, there is no floating selvedge.  I don't use them.