A cute little dish towel

In my efforts be cheap and a wanna-be hippie green, I've decided that paper towels are no longer welcome in my home. They're not cheap {especially since my husband thinks you need at least 3 any time you use them} and you throw them away after you use them once...not very green!

So I made a trip to Walmart and picked up two 5 packs of Flour Sack Towels. They look like this:

Via

What I didn't know is that they are huge. So I decided that this was the perfect opportunity to put on my crafty-pants and create not only some cute dish towels but also some napkins, 'cause ya know we're going to need to wipe our mouths too.

The master plan was to cut one towel in half to create 2 dish towels and one towel into quarters to create 4 napkins. Since I have 10 of these suckers that's a lot of towels and napkins! After washing & drying the towels I ironed them forever only to realize they will never be wrinkle free and maybe it would have been smarter to wait to wash them until after I'd trimmed them down. I finally got them all ironed, cut, and pinned so I could sew the raw edges from my trimming. And yes, I pin the bejesus out of stuff because I suck at sewing.

This one's a napkin :)

Now to make them cute! First you need some fun, colorful fabric. The ones I used came from AC Moore because the choices for fabric stores in Charleston are Hancock Fabrics (which has crap for a selection) or a small "quilt" shop that's a bit out of my price range.

I used one of the FQs to make a trim for the bottom 4ish inches of the towel.

I used the pieces from the charm pack to make letters for each day of the week. I printed out the letters in a font that I liked on my printer, cut them out with an exacto knife, then traced the letters onto the back side of the fabric {note: you have to trace the letter backwards so it will be correct on the right side of the fabric - yeah I did it wrong the first time!}If you're super cool and have a Silhouette or a Cricut obviously you can be super cool and use your fancy-schmancy machine to do the work for you.

I decided to attach the letters with Heat & Bond but someone who actually knows how to sew could probably sew them on lickity-split. This is where I had to scold myself again for my lack of forethought - a smart girl would have fused the Heat & Bond to the fabric then cut traced & cut out the letters but not me! Noooo, I have to do this crap the hard way! Anywho, after your all cut out and heat & bonded you can attach the letter to the towel (somewhat in the middle) by removing the paper and ironing on your ho-made applique.

Then you wonder when you're ever going to have the free time to finish the other 6 for the remaining days of the week...

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