I needed new tea towels for the kitchen. Do you realize it is EXTREMELY difficult to find plain old cotton dishtowels nowadays?
Most of the ones I found were thick terrycloth fabric which are absorbent but I find that they leave lots of fuzz on the dishes when I dry them. Yep, I hand dry dishes ..... no dishwasher here folks. Had one once, will never have another one.
So in my hunt for tea towels that were absorbent, didn't leave a ton of fuzz on the dishes when I dried them and were pretty and old fashioned, I decided to make my own! Decorate my own that is.
Hunting in the kitchen section of our only large department store in town ..... I won't name the store ..... many people hate it, I found some plain white flour sacks. Yippee! Just what I needed and they were cheap too! $1.97 for two.
Having a few ideas in my head, I logged onto Pinterest to look at photos of what I wanted. Now I would love to have a weeks worth of pretty embroidered tea towels but that just isn't going to happen anytime soon and I needed them NOW.
So this is what I did. After giving the tea towels a quick iron ..... no, I normally don't iron my tea towels but I had to this one time so I could continue with the decorating ..... I applied two strips of painting tape. The space between was approximately one inch.
Finding some country red fabric paint in my craft supply stash, I dry brushed the paint in-between the strips of tape. Now I dry brushed the paint on as I wanted the paint to be uneven....faded in spots....as if they were old tea towels, to give them the grain sack look.
After letting the paint dry overnight, I carefully removed the tape and viola! I have new, "old" grain sack looking tea towels. Just perfect. Oh the possibilities of colors I could do and so quickly too! I now have a weeks worth of decorated tea towels that only took me about an hour!
Have a wonderful day and remember to give your loved ones a hug!
Very clever of you Debbie, the towels look great!
ReplyDeletexx
Clever and thrifty too! I like the way you think
ReplyDeleteGood Afternoon Debbie, What a great idea and so thrifty. I love the fact that you have designed the tea towels yourself, so have been able to use the right colour for your kitchen.
ReplyDeleteLike you I much prefer cotton tea towels, they get the job done much better. I do have a small dishwasher, which I only use at weekends, but we are a "bowl of hot water, Fairy Liquid and a dishcloth" family here as well.
Have a lovely weekend.
Best Wishes
Daphne
How creative, Debbie! As always, I love your ideas :) Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteHugs to you!
I purchased some flour sack dishtowels as well. Cotton leaves no linty residue while wiping dishes. I also like the fact that you can customize them according to your own color schemes and taste. Yours are cute!
ReplyDeleteLinda
mysewwhatblog.blogspot.com
Very cute!
ReplyDeleteAnother way to set the paint after
it dries is to run a warm iron
over the painted area.
M :)
Thanks for the tip Melinda!
DeleteIt is so frustrating to not be able to find just what you need so I admire your resourcefulness and how you made them just right for you. Ingenuous!! I don't think I could find flour sacks over here.
ReplyDeleteCath @ Bits 'n Bobs
They came out really nice. My mother-in-law made me a set of embroidered ones which I love and can't bring myself to wipe dishes with, so I use them in the bread basket, as placemats, etc. I think she got them from the Herchnerr's catalog, but I'm not sure.
ReplyDelete