Tea Towel Love

Who doesn't love a hand-embroidered tea towel? I know I do and I can't get enough of them. Growing up, I thought everyone's tea towels were all hand-embroidered. It was a long time before I found out that many people just buy towels at Target/WalMart/etc and there is no embellishing involved in the process.

I have so many Aunt Martha transfers that it's not even funny, yet I still look through the options whenever I'm in a craft/fabric store and buy any that look good. I also love to find images in Dover coloring books, on the web, or adapt ideas myself.

The latest tea towels I embroidered were for a swap over on craftster. By the time I'd finished them, I was in love with them. It was very difficult to part with the towels. I still want another set for myself.
Here are all three together (pics courtesy of my lovely swap partner, Slingmomma, because I forgot to take pics before I mailed -- a common problem of mine), plus a knitted flower. She said that she liked bright colorful patterns and loved flowers. So do I!


This one is my favorite. I love the way the flowers turned out. I used a combination of stitches - laisy daisy, satin stitch, chain stitch, backstitch, and stem stitch. The variety of stitches created a very nice texture.

The second tea towel is actually the first one I embroidered in the series. I think it's ok, but not great. I like the middle flower, especially the way I filled in the center with a sort of overlapping of stitches to create a textured basketweave effect. I'm not sure about the four outlying flowers. The main reason each on is different is that I didn't really like the way the first one turned out, so I decided to experiment with them rather than rip and re-stitch. If I did it over again, I'd make the four flowers the same and either use the upper left of bottom right flower as a guide.
The third tea towel was completed in no time because I used backstitch and long, straight stitches. I really like the clean look of the lines and the effect of using these two very simple stitches.

Now, I'm onto another set of tea towels for yet another crafter swap. I'll be keeping plans for these under wraps for a while -- just in case my swap partner wanders over here -- but look forward to sharing in the near future.