REGISTRATION OPENS:
JANUARY 9 AT NOON
One of seven courses available for the May 8 – 11, 2025
MCA Weekend Workshop @ Haystack
Handwoven Towels for the Home
Instructor: Hilary Crowell
Haystack Studio: Fiber
Enrollment Limit: 10
Materials Fees: $20 – See Student Supplied Materials List Below
Level: Beginner – Intermediate
Class Description:
In our time together, students will learn to measure a warp, dress a multi-shaft loom, and weave cloth. You will take home at least one, if not more, of your own handwoven towels. You will choose from a selection of colorways to reproduce on your own. Working with 8/2 unmercerized cotton, you will dress your loom with enough thread for several towels. Alternatively, if there’s interest, students can swap looms to weave the colorway of a classmate.
We’ll go over how to finish the woven cotton cloth and on Sunday morning students will hem their towels. In addition to the knowledge they gain, students will leave with their own set of absorbent, handwoven towels!
No experience with weaving is necessary. Students familiar with weaving have the option to experiment with more complex four-shaft weave structures and/or design their own colorway and pattern draft, depending on interest and experience.
Materials + Fees: $20
A $20 fee will be billed to students at the time of registration. If students want to make an additional warp, they should expect an additional fee of $16 to pay the instructor directly during the weekend.
Student Supplied Materials List:
- Yard stick
- 60” flexible tape measure
- Comfy socks or slidey slippers
- One small handmade thing that’s important to you or that you use frequently
- Writing utensil
- Reading glasses, if needed. Some parts of the loom dressing process are very precise.
- Headlamp for threading heddles
- Scissors
About the Instructor-
Hilary Crowell operates The Cultivated Thread (TCT) full time out of her studio in Wiscasset, creating handwoven home goods and wearables. An earlier career in organic agriculture inspires Hilary’s product design and informs The Cultivated Thread’s core principles: functionality, durability, and beauty. Hilary’s passion is for functional art and she mostly makes towels that are not only visually delightful but also soft and absorbent, ready to be put to work in the kitchen or bathroom. Hilary works exclusively with natural fibers and strives to source organic and/or U.S. produced materials.
