DIY Recipe Dish Towel

Hi! It's Bev from Flamingo Toes here today with a fun new tutorial for this DIY Recipe Dishtowel! It makes such a great gift idea or family memento and it is so simple to make! This sweet dishtowel is a great way to show off a family or favorite recipe – and you can make it whether you have an original recipe card or not. If you have an original recipe card you can recreate that look on the dishtowel by scanning in the card and then printing it out on transfer paper. But if you don't have one, don't let that stop you! I have a great friend that I love to cook and bake with, but she lives in Arizona and I live in Tennessee -it's a little hard to get together for a cooking party! We've even done Skype cooking days, where we make the same recipes but we have laptops in the kitchen and Skype open so we can cook “together”! One of our favorite recipes is this Banana Cream Pie. It's actually an Emeril recipe – and it's life changing. (Totally not an exaggeration). I wanted to make up a dishtowel that celebrates all the fun we've had cooking together and shows off one of our favorite recipes!

Here's a fun tutorial for making up a DIY Recipe Dishtowel – whether you have a family recipe or not! Materials: 18” x 28” piece of linen (or premade blank dishtowel) Iron On Transfer Paper Trim for Dishtowel – 3” x 42” piece of fabric (I used Rose Lane, my newest fabric collection with Riley Blake Designs) 20” ric rac Embroidery Floss Fusible Webbing Strip (I used Steam a Seam 1/4” strips) Oliso Pro Iron Recipe and Computer

Instructions: 1. Decide the recipe you'd like to use. If you are using a family recipe printed on a card, scan the card then save it to your computer. If you're using a recipe you don't have a card for, write out or copy the recipe to a text program like Word or something similar. To give the recipe a handwritten look, change the font to a script or handwriting font.

2. Reverse the image, whether you are using a scanned recipe card or you've made your own. If you don't reverse the image, the recipe will be printed backwards when you iron it on.

3. Print out your recipe on the iron on transfer paper.

4. Press the fabric for your dishtowel. You want it to be free of wrinkles and it helps if it's warm when you iron on the transfer. I recommend the highest setting on the Oliso and not using steam.

5. Place the iron on transfer on the lower half of the dishtowel, centering it between the left and right sides and centered in the bottom half of the dishtowel. I usually finger press the halfway point in the dishtowel to help with this.

6. Follow the instructions for your iron on transfer paper to transfer the recipe to your fabric. I found it really helped to use a wool mat under the fabric for a nice flat surface. I also pressed really hard with the iron.

7. Once your design is transferred, remove the paper.

8. To finish your dishtowel, hem the bottom edge of the fabric ruffle piece.

9. Sew a gathering stitch 1/4” from the top edge of the fabric and pull up the thread to gather the ruffle. Place the ruffle right sides together with the bottom edge of the dishtowel, with the raw edges together. Sew with a 3/8” seam allowance. Press the ruffle away from the dishtowel.

10. Topstitch 1/4” away from the ruffle seam. Hem the sides and top of the dishtowel by turning under the raw edges twice and sewing next to the folded edge. Make sure to hem the sides of the ruffle when you hem the sides of the dishtowel. 11. Add a bit of ricrac trim just above the topstitching on the dishtowel. I used 1/4” Steam-a-Seam to hold the ric rac in place. You can also stitch down the center of the ricrac.

12. To add the embroidery to the ricrac, bring your needle up at the bottom section of the higher curve, then put the needle back down at the top section of the lower curve. See the image below. I used 6 strands of Aurifil floss for the stitching.

That finishes off your dishtowel! Now you're all set  for a gift or a fun holiday decoration! Wouldn't a Christmas dishtowel with Grandma's Fudge be so sweet?!