Another Adventure with….

drop cloths, Citra-solv, and The Graphics Fairy—my favorite trio! Today’s feature is the tea towel/kitchen towel/napkin. Call it what you want. Use it how you will. I have bought some fancy-smancy (spelling???) tea toweling in the past. It was nice stuff…a little expensive (not overly so). It had a nice French Country feel to it. However, it just doesn’t do it for me when it comes to everyday use. I wash my kitchen linens in HOT water. It just makes me feel better about the kitchen culture. Anyway…the toweling kind of crinkles and just doesn’t look so great when washed in hot water (the care instructions said cold, but….). Plus my image transfers just didn’t take as well as I would have liked, and they faded quickly with washing---like two washes and you could barely see the image. What’s a girl to do? Go back to her favorite stand-by, of course. Yes, that humble drop cloth. With each wash a towel/napkin made from a drop cloth gets more absorbent and softer. Images transfer well using the Citra-solv method. I can usually wash them over and over and over—sometimes using bleach—and the image hangs tight. Note the “usually” in that sentence---I have used drop cloths that don’t take a transfer as well or whose images faded in the wash, but that has been the exception in my case. Who knows what the difference was…same brand, different results.

Anyway…here are a few of my latest creations:

Halloween Versions

 

 

Farm Animal Versions

 

 

Remember my machine sampler from last time? It was useful for deciding on some decorative detail for the towels.

Here is a close up of the pig towel detail:

It is actually four rows of stitches—two different styles combined. Remember: NO RULES!

Here is the detail on the chicken towel (it reminded me of chicken feet):

And finally, the detail from the skull towel:

It just looked Halloween-ish. Kind of like Frankenstein’s stitches.

Oh…one last detail….

a twill tape hanger sewn into the seams across one of the top corners. Hang your towel from a hook or from the pull on a drawer or cabinet door. Definitely not necessary, but a nice touch.

Okay, that’s it for now. So until next time…..

Sammi

Let’s Party: