I don't have any suggestions for you (I've bought mine at HomeGoods also) - and I've been to lazy to research what I should buy. So, I'm just posting in order to follow along! I hope you receive some good recommendations!

I buy really good 100% cotton hand towels, in black, in the bath towel section of a store. The last time I was in Restoration Hardware's factory outlet store, they had towels. Link to see I have cheesecloth ones from William Sonoma with an olive pattern on them...to cover rising bread dough or use in a basket with hot bread....

<Linen tales solid linen kitchen towels> are my favorite. I also have a couple of their printed linen towels but they are not as soft or absorbent, maybe after many more washes that will change but the mustard colored ones that I have were great after one wash.

I also have quite a few vintage cotton towels from etsy but I prefer linen because it dries a bit quicker.

I’ve bought several nice ones at HomeGoods. I’ve also been using these for years from Wms Sonoma (both jacquard and waffle weave cotton) but they have other nice ones.

Link - Wms Sonoma Kitchen Towels

100% cotton and appealing colors/design are my only criteria. I have a bunch of different kinds. I do like terrycloth, as it's the most absorbent, IMPE, but I have regular woven ones too.

Belgian linen towels- LIBECO

French linen towels-CHARVET EDITIONS

Ritz Wonder Towels. I learned about them in GW (Kitchens). I have birdseye, I have linen. I have flour sack. I have the remains of the thick striped Williams-Sonoma of the previous century. All have merits. Birdseye is known for its absorbency, but gets soaked fast. I love them in stacks. The Ritz Wonder towels are equally absobant, but their thicker threads and special weave make it take longer to get soaked, making them edge out the win for individual towel. This is based on drying hands and dishes—I don't use my towels for counters and other cleaning projects.

https://kilianhardware.com/ritz-flemish-lintless-glass-wonder-towel/?searchid=251720&search_query=Ritz

Not cheap, but they last forever--Williams-Sonoma All Purpose towels.

https://www.williams-sonoma.com/products/all-purpose-pantry-towels/

Linen is the best if you are polishing glassware - it is less likely to leave lint. Cotton absorbs 25% of its weight and linen 20%, but both are very absorbent. Longer staple cotton (such as Egyptian or Turkish) is less likely to leave lint, but linen fibers are much longer than cotton, which is even better by shedding less lint. If you are just drying dishes, then cotton is better.

I keep both and use cotton for drying and linen for polishing. I make mine using my overlock machine and use leftover fabric from sewing projects. I use waffle weave terrycloth for the cotton ones.

I also use the Ritz cotton towels from Williams Sonoma. The first ones of that brand I had were ancient but still great and I bought them many years ago at an outlet store. The W-S ones i have now are several years old and still going strong.

These from Wms Sonoma are at least 24 years old.

Love Geometry. $15 per towel but worth it!

debra

While I cant really do it these days I wove my own. Mostly cotton but a high quality cotton and a feqw in linen. I have a stash of towels. They really last.

patriciae

HU-279332973, (Patricia E)

What did you use for weaving your towels? I would like to do this as well.

Did you use a loom like one of these?

I have some in linen that match my kitchen accent colors that I might put out if having guests. Ironing after washing required. They are more pretty than efficient. I don't polish glassware. If it can't come out of the dishwasher ready for company or even just us, I don't want or keep it.

My daily use kitchen towels are 100% cotton. Most are Sur la Table or Williams Sonoma - and old. More recently I've been pleased with some bargain towels from COSTCO! Yes, 8 to a package Costco towels. Yellow in both solids and fine stripes.....they work well color-wise in my mostly white kitchen.

I have an unopened package and it reads 'All Clad Metalcrafters, Set of 8 kitchen towels. 100% absorbent combed cotton. Made by Ritzenthaler Co. (Pennsylvania) for distribution by Costco.' No complaints about them at all.

I have a bunch of towels from Sur La Table. My husband worked at their home office in the late 2000’s, so they’re at least 15 years old. They look very similar to the Williams Sonoma ones, without the logo. They are cotton and lintless.

My favorites are various vintage linen towels found at rummage/ estate sales.

Lars, if you want to weave plain weave which is certainly valid for towels you can use a rigid heddle loom. If you wanted to do more you would need to pay a little more and get a four harness table loom. Then you could do twills. I think the better table looms have a better beater bar but for simple weaving a rigid heddle works fine. I have one but I normally weave on floor looms. I did not pay full price though. I am lucky about weaving tools. Warning though it is addictive.

patriciae

Thanks for that info. I would definitely want to be able to weave twills, and so I think this might be a better starting loom for me, at just over $1,000. It looks like it would be easy enough for a beginner, but I would still need instructions to get started.

I have done a lot of textile designs, but most of them are rather complicated, and so I would need to start over and create some simpler designs, if I want to start weaving.

@Lars

https://desertweaversandspinners.com/

https://schg.org/content.aspx?page_id=22&club_id=936515&module_id=373045

There are quite a few places in the L.A. area with classes and supplies, but I don't know what's in the desert.

I’ve a kitchen drawer full of all types of fabrics, colors and patterns, but I still almost always use the Williams Sonoma ones because they do what I need them to do

I love anything seasonal!! Kitchen hand towels are a guilty pleasure this way. For dish drying I prefer all white cotton, not too think. Doesn't need a brand name to do the job.

I always go for linen. IME they dry much faster than cotton.

Thanks for those links, Plllog - both look very useful. The second one (Southern California Handweavers' Guild) listed a teacher who is in Redlands, which is reasonably close to me - in fact, she is closer to my location here than my old location in Westchester. I will try to contact her about classes. I could easily go there and back in one day - it is less than an hour from here. Covina is an hour and a half away, which is also doable, but Redlands is a lot closer, and traffic is not usually bad.

I've a big stack of floursack towels. Most embroidered by my mom, some by me. Still got a couple of gma's tough old ones. Days of the week motif, or food. Mostly for drying and food handling like washing greens or covering dough. Decent floursack has gotten kind of pricey though- when Joanns closed I picked up some yardage of birdseye cotton to embroider the next round on. A smaller stack of thinner woven printed cotton and a few terry ones for hand towels in the kitchen. I use a lot of them. A few thick microfiber mat kinds of ones for on the dishrack. A pile of old cotton t-shirt cuts that serve for "paper towels" more often than the paper ones. And a handful of randoms that mostly came as presents.

I have some ancient Williams Sonoma towels and believe it or not recently found that the Target waffle weave cotton dish towels are great. Inexpensive and super absorbent.

Beesneeds — I would love to see one or two of your embroidered flour sack towels. Hand embroidered?

Chloe, those belong in a fiberarts museum ;)

Good suggestions, thanks for the recs.

You can always resell a loom you have out grown although in your case Lars you might want to do tapestry and rigid heddle works for that. I mentioned table looms because they cost less and take less room but if money is no object (to a degree) you cant beat a nice Schatch baby wolf. Easy to understand, well constructed, had a good even beat, folds up. It is certainly easier to learn to weave from a teacher but it is also possible for some like you who is good with their hands and obviously can think things through to teach themselves. This teacher could also know someone in your area. And there are videos. I am self taught and there were no videos just some ancient weaving books. I started out weaving overshot. I had no idea. I did fine ignorance being bliss.

Dish towels are perfect samples which is why I have made so many over the years. I like playing with weave structure. I really love weaving linen but it is the very devil to warp.

patriciae

Petalique, I don't have pics of them, I just use them, lol. But yes, hand embroidered. Mom don't do much embroidery now, so it's on me if I want embroidered towels, lol. I've got a fat stack of transfer to choose from, but I know the birds eye cotton don't take them as nice as floursack does. It stretches different too. I might do pinch and pull freehand on them.

“Chloe, those belong in a fiberarts museum”

Right! Pretty amazing how well they’ve held up!

I have these and really like them. They are a great size, dry well and launder well and they came in solid red. We hang them on our range handle.

https://www.williams-sonoma.com/products/all-purpose-pantry-towels/

Popping back in to say that I have some really nice thick waffle weave cotton towels I got from TJMaxx (or perhaps HomeGoods, Marshalls). They're big too. I generally find what I want at a very low price in those stores. I think they were less than $2 apiece in a 3 pc set.

Carol, I agree you can get good quality and prices at those stores for kitchen, bed and bath linens. I once paid $12.99 for a 60x60 tablecloth I saw on Amazon for $45. I rarely walk through HomeGoods without spying something I…um…need.😊

Just thinking…I’ve bought plenty of this type of kitchen towel at HomeGoods to use as napkins for outdoor entertaining.