I can't see why modelling the towels would be so hard. Try to offset a distorted helix. Fool around with vertices a bit: FFD, bend, noise etc, and bevel. Didn't try, but I can't see a reason why it should not work. 
Maybe Richard has a different approach, but who hasn't.
Andras
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Maybe Richard has a different approach, but who hasn't.

Andras
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