VPC2017: Dona Isabel Maria's Perugia Towel

Dona Isabel Maria presents what she described as a "knock off Perugia towel" for the category One Metre Material Project.

She says:

Having long wanted a Perugia towel of silly proportions but not being interested in learning to weave, and baulking at the cost of good reproductions, it became necessary to figure out how to create a plausibly period knockoff in time for Canterbury Faire.

I bought one metre of linen canvas (wanting something slightly more substantial than shirt weight but having limited options), washed it and ironed it dry before remeasuring the piece and squaring it up.  I then cut it into two and stitched the pieces end on end before hemming the sides and fraying the ends to form a knotted fringe.

To imitate the Perugia towels, I then embroidered a stripe on it using Elizabethan Knitting Stitch. To save sanity, I used waste canvas to gauge the stitching as the canvas proved to be rather uneven.

VERDICT: This towel was used at Canterbury Faire, alongside my wash station, and proved to be eminently practical, particularly when combined with the shelf.