Friday, May 3, 2013

Decorated Tea Towels

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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!
 



9 comments:

  1. Very clever of you Debbie, the towels look great!

    xx

    ReplyDelete
  2. Clever and thrifty too! I like the way you think

    ReplyDelete
  3. Good 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.
    Like 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

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  4. How creative, Debbie! As always, I love your ideas :) Thanks for sharing!

    Hugs to you!

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  5. 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!
    Linda
    mysewwhatblog.blogspot.com

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  6. Very cute!

    Another way to set the paint after
    it dries is to run a warm iron
    over the painted area.

    M :)

    ReplyDelete
  7. It 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.
    Cath @ Bits 'n Bobs

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  8. 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

Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment! I love reading all of them. Have a wonderful day.

Debbie

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