Easy Embellished Dish Towel Tutorial

It seems like we go through lots of dish towels around here. I'm also very picky about my dish towels, they must be very absorbent! Nothing is worse than having a dish towel that won't dry your hands or dishes well. My very favorite dish towel is the flour sack type which is 100% cotton. If you haven't tried these, you must! I also like to use these to embellish for gifts. Since Christmas is right around the corner these would be great stocking stuffers. Very inexpensive and fast to make.

I purchase my flour sacks at Target in a pack of 4 and equals out to $1 a piece. Make sure you wash, dryer and then iron your flour sacks well before sewing. These usually don't shrink up too much, but you want to make sure you do get any shrinkage out of the way before you sew with them.

Fold your towel in thirds. 

Then fold the towel in half. This will keep the "raw" ends of the towel hidden and make a nice, neat hand towel.

Next you need to prepare your fabric embellishment(s) that you will be sewing on to the towel. I used my GO! Baby Fall Medely template to cut out the perfect pumpkin out of a scrap of orange knit t-shirt. Iron heat and bond to the back of the scrap material and then cut out your image.

Iron the image to your towel.

Pin around the image keeping the material in place while you sew around the image. Please note that I am only sewing through the top 2 layers of my towel and not all 4 layers. This keeps the backside of the towel nice and neat and you will not see the thread from the appliqued image.

Use a tight zig zag stitch to sew around your image. Experiment on a scrap of fabric to get your setting just right. Take your time sewing around your image for the best results.

Next pin ribbon around the dish towel and tuck the raw edges in between the layers of the towel.

I added 3 rows of smaller ribbon. Now use a zig zag stitch to secure. Sew slow and make sure you are catching the ribbon on the backside of your towel as well.

Last, I used  a straight stitch to sew the long edges of the towel. Then used fabric paint to paint on the face of my pumpkin (I'm not the greatest artist, no judging haha!)

I plan on making some Christmas ones for stocking stuffers. The ideas for making embellished dish towels are endless!