Huck Toweling for Swedish Weaving – Some Finds

I’ve written about Swedish weaving before here on Needle ‘n Thread. And early this year, I reviewed this new book on Swedish weaving.

The latter resulted in an influx of email, asking about sources for huck fabric.

This morning, my plan was to share with you a much more detailed article on some recent fabric finds for huck toweling, the ground fabric traditionally used for Swedish weaving.

I haven’t finished my stitching explorations on the two fabrics that I’m playing with, though. Still, they both work and are good fabrics for the technique – even though they are each at a different end of the spectrum, when it comes to fabric.

So for those who have been writing and inquiring where to find huck fabric, I’m going to briefly share two resources for huck toweling used in Swedish weaving techniques… and some thoughts.

Huck toweling as used today in the wider world beyond needlework is a relatively cheap (ie, inexpensive, but also “cheap” depending on where it’s made and what kind of quality control is involved in the process) cotton toweling fabric that has a particular weave.

The weave involves “floats” over the standard base of woven fabric threads. I’m not an expert in weaving, so I can’t necessarily explain it technically, but if you’re really curious, I’m sure there’s information online. Feel free to chime in on the comment section below the article here on the website, if you’d like to elucidate on the weave of huck fabric!

Basically, the benefit of a huck weave is that floats of thread are added above the foundation weave, and these floats add more surface area of thread to the fabric, increasing both absorbency and warmth.

Cotton huck toweling, then, is a fabric with superior absorbency, so it is used in situations where absorbent towels are good to have. You can find huck towels through medical supply outlets, through kitchen supply outlets, cleaning supply outlets, mechanical and garage supply outlets, and so forth.

Huck towels sop up. They soak stuff up well.

But Those Aren’t Great for Stitching

Normally, when it comes to stitching, though, the huck towels sold for cleaning are not always high quality.

Are rarely high quality.

Are really never high quality.

When purchasing already-made huck towels through typical suppliers in other industries, I’ve noticed that they are darn poorly made, the weave of the towel is loose and haphazard, the cut is off square, sewn hems are most basic – they’re just not really the kind of towels you’d expend needlework effort on.

It seems that decent huck toweling became somewhat difficult to find for a while, and it apparently still is, given the amount of inquiries I receive for resources.

I found two resources recently, and I bought some of their fabric to try it out for you.

Cotton Huck Resource

One of these resources – out of Colorado – is an online quilting shop called eQuilter. They sell cotton huck toweling (17″ wide) by the yard for about $7 / yard.

I don’t know if that’s a local brick and mortar shop or if it’s solely an online shop (given the name, I’m thinking it’s solely online). I do know that my order came relatively quickly and it was packaged well.

It’s a decent cotton huck, the weave is tight and true. It’s not a super stiff fabric (like Aida cloth or similar). It’s definitely “toweling” and it has a soft hand. But it is decent for stitching.

Linen Huck Resource

Now, you know me.

And you know that I’m a sucker for linen.

Well, did you know that there is linen huck fabric?

There is!

The only place I’ve found it – and it’s available in both white and natural – is Thomas Ferguson’s Irish Linen, straight out of Ireland.

It is available in pre-made towels (but the “float” side of the fabric is the back of the towel, which doesn’t work for Swedish weaving) and as yardage (at 71″ wide).

But Wait!

But there is an important caveat!! If you’re a Swedish weaving fan, please don’t jump right onto the linen bandwagon without careful consideration!

If you are used to working on cotton huck for Swedish weaving, you may find the linen pretty difficult. The weave is much finer, and the floats are more difficult to see. I have to use a magnifier to work on the linen huck. I don’t on cotton huck.

I know that many folks who love needlework gravitate towards certain types of needlework as their eyesight weakens. Huck embroidery benefits from being uncomplicated, and it’s fairly easy to see, depending on your ground fabric. There are other grounds you can work on besides huck toweling, too – but that’s a topic for a different day.

But if you are an avid huck embroiderer and you want to explore very fine huck embroidery or Swedish weaving, the linen from Ferguson’s might work for you.

(Incidentally, the natural linen is easier to work on than the white.)

If You Can Hold Out…

If you can hold out for a while, I’ll be showing you, up close, both the cotton and the linen mentioned above, and I’ll be troubleshooting with them a little bit, too.

I will have more details on this topic coming soon!

Have a lovely Friday!