Some more tea towels

I was playing with my embroidery machine again.  I stitched out the cherry and pear design onto some cotton linen fabric just to see how they stitched out.  The samples turned out nice so decided to use them to decorate some kitchen towels.  After cutting out the squares around the designs I frayed the edges by removing several threads from the edges.  Then I used one of my decorative stitches on my machine to stitch them to the towels.  A quick and easy project that would make a great little gift for someone. 

Days of The Week Hand Towels

My Embroidery Sewing machine has been in the shop and I got it back recently.  I had a new excitement for embroidery designs because I had not been able to use them in so long.

I picked up this Redwork book from Joann fabrics and decide to try out some of the designs.  I picked out the days of the weeks kittens and put them on some of Martha Stewart's Days Of The Weeks Towels  I had just waiting for something.  Each design only took about 5 minutes to stitch out.  A nice project to try out my newly fixed machine.

9 Square Dishtowels

My latest small sewing project was these embellished dishtowels. I wanted a quick creative project that didn't take a lot of brain power.

These didn't take long to make and I had everything on hand. I had a package of waffle weave dishtowels just waiting to be embellished. And somewhere in my stash I came across a box of vintage fabric squares. A few were already sewn into 9 patch blocks. I simply sewed the patches on my towels on point with my handy blanket stitch on my sewing machine. Quick and easy. Cute too! http://www.myrepurposedlife.net

Knitted Tea Towel

I like knitting simple useful projects like this tea towel. It is something I can finish fast and knit without having to think about it much. I got my idea for this from Page's Soft Cotton Knit Dishtowels . Her towels are much smaller than I wanted but I got the basic idea. I found a huge bag of cotton yarn for five dollars at my local Goodwill Store. It is South Maid Cotton 8. Most of it is white or ecru and a few peach and periwinkle skeins too. It is finer yarn than Page's towels used so I adapted the pattern to fit what I had. I used size 5 knitting needles and I cast on 70 stitches. My towel ended up about 14 inches by 18 inches.

I picked up these three vintage dishtowels a few weeks ago at the auction. They were among three boxes of household linens that I won for only $4.00. They are in really nice condition one has several stains but I may try a more aggressive washing to see if I can get them out. Or I may just use it as is. I patterned my knitted dishtowel after these. I have been having so much fun going to the auction and coming home with my new old goodies. I already completed another project with some other things from this buy. I will show this soon.