How to Turn Inspiration into a Towel Design

Have you ever wondered how to transform a general idea into a design that you can weave? Robin Lynde describes how she did just that.—Handwoven editors

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Last year, a giant sunflower grew in my garden within view of my home office. Its massive stem had split in half, each half bearing multiple flowers that engulfed that garden bed in yellow blossoms. Next to the sunflower was a bed full of bright orange cosmos that I use for dyeing, and I couldn’t ignore the impact of those bright colors side by side. Together, they inspired me to weave.

Here’s how I went about turning that inspiration into the Sunny Garden Towels (on page 46 in the Summer 2026 issue of Handwoven).

Exploring the Stash

I started with my yarn stash—my shelf of 5/2 cotton in a spectrum of colors—from which I selected six yarns in the yellow and orange families that reminded me of those flowers in my garden.

These yellow and orange yarns from Robin’s stash were her starting point.

Next, I needed a draft. I decided to use a color-and-weave pattern, and I found a motif in Strickler that looks like flowers (see Resources). I saw that I could also weave one of my favorite pinwheel motifs simply by changing the tie-up, which would give me the opportunity to try more options on a single warp.

Color-and-weave patterns are typically woven with only two colors (a light and a dark), but I wanted to use all six of my yellow and orange yarns. To ensure that the patterning would show up, I needed to consider where to place each color. To do that, I looked at the relative values of those yellow and orange yarns—how light or dark they were when compared to white (and to each other)...

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Make them yourself: Sunny Garden Towels