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Kitchen Towel Tutorial

After making the baby blanket the other day, I got to thinking that I could make kitchen towels using the same technique. 

I found a cute cotton remnant at the fabric store:


I love the vintage look, the colors (which work great with my brick kitchen floor), and the chickens.  John holds the reasonable view that barnyard animals don't belong in the kitchen, but I think he made an exception for chickens when I inherited my grandma's rooster decor.  Oldest son even created a painting for me with Grandma's rooster as inspiration:


Anyway, I decided the fabric remnant would make nice towels.  I found some waffle-weave material in the home decor section of the fabric store, and used it as towel backing.

The technique was the same as the baby blanket.  First, be sure to pre-wash your fabric.  The waffle-weave, in particular, shrank a lot! 

Then, cut your fabric pieces.  I had slightly less than a yard of the remnant, and just cut it so I could get three towels out of the piece.  Then I cut the waffle-weave to match.  You could also use a kitchen towel as a template.  Just cut it slightly larger than your desired finished size, to account for the seam allowance.


Place right-sides together, and sew around, leaving a gap of several inches.  Trim the corners, then turn the towel right-side out.  Then iron the edges and top-stitch all the way around.  The top-stitching will close the opening you left.  I chose to experiment with decorative stitching, though I should have used a red thread if I wanted it to show up for a photo.

I don't think the towels turned out nicely enough for gift-giving.  The waffle-weave is thick and caused me a bit of trouble when I did the top-stitching.  I think I would use flour sack cloth as a backing if I were making the towels as gifts.  However, I like the end result for my kitchen.



Thankful thought:  Thanks for the joys of new kitchen towels!




Comments

  1. BiancaMay 17, 2012 at 9:36 AM

    Nice and quick way to personalize your kitchen.
    Clever!
    Personally not a big fan of chickens or roosters. Do you know how dusty they are?! Absurdly dusty!! (my mom had a chicken in her kitchen once, can't even begin telling you how dirty her kitchen was. Big blobs of dust on her windows were the chick flew/jumped against the glass... Took as a full day to clean everything)

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