Buying and Using Huck Toweling

You can buy a narrower width huck cloth called huck toweling and make your own embroidered hand towels. It is 15 inches wide, 14 count (9 floats per inch), and requires a size 24 tapestry needle for work with 6 strand embroidery floss or #5 perle cotton. Like huck cloth, it has double threaded vertical loops in brick-like rows across the fabric on one side, the right side.

When you buy yardage of toweling, such as Huck Toweling 15'' Wide 50 Yards-White from Joann.com or 50 yards of 15 inch white from Roberts Arts and Crafts. Wash it first to preshrink the cotton. You can then iron, cut, and hem. Make the towel as long as you want. I like to make two towels out of a 1 yard cut of material.

Hint: Use a seam ripper to slice one of the horizontal threads on the reverse side a few inches from the raw edge. Carefully remove the thread all the way across. This gives you a nice straight line to sew or serge the edge.

Cotton huck toweling is nice and absorbent. It washes well. However, the nature of the top work embroidery, held only by those two little loop threads, makes huck weaving vulnerable to wear.

If you plan to use the towel often...

• Use all cotton threads. Metallic threads are pretty, but they can feel scratchy to hands.
• Do not use too much decoration. Excessive embroidery will show more obvious wear and color fading. Towels are usually folded anyway, so a decorative pattern at one end is sufficient.

If the towel is mainly for decorative use...

• It will receive less use and abuse in the guest bath or powder room.
• Still, do not overdo the decoration. Let some of the towel show. Find beauty in simple elegance. Save your elaborate designs for afghans, not towels!