Blue Gingham Hanging Dishtowels

   I made some hanging dishtowels with some of the blue gingham that I used to make the kitchen curtains.  I love these.

    I have plenty of the blue gingham fabric to make a cover for my stand mixer.  I'm going to make that as soon as I get the coordinating white solid and navy solid fabric I ordered a couple of weeks ago.  I want to make the cover in the patchwork style like the one I made a couple of months ago  using 2.5" squares.  I will probably make some potholders as well.  Then I have to think of something else to make with all the leftover gingham.

   I've also been knitting some dishcloths.  I'm making a kitchen set for a niece who got married last fall.  I know it's late but I just decided the other day that I wanted to do this.  I will knit her a set of dishcloths, sew up  a couple of potholders and make a couple of hanging dish towels for her.  I wanted to show you the pot I use as a yarn bowl.  My daughter bought this strawberry pot for me about 12 years ago from someone who throws pots in Indiana while she was on vacation.  I have never used this for any plants.  I have been using it as a decoration and as a yarn bowl for years.  It's kind of fragile and I wanted to keep it nice.

Summer Holidays Are Upon Us

  We have three lovely summer holidays coming up.  Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day.  They all deserve some patriotic decorations.  I made my whole family some patriotic hanging dish towels and I have gifted them now, so I can show them off here.

   I made ten of these, each family got a set of two including me.  These are so much fun to make and everyone loves them. 

      I bought the fabric from Hobby Lobby about two months ago and I found the pretty blue dish towels at Walmart along with the lovely buttons.  Each actual dish towel cost $2.96, and you cut the towel in half to get two hanging towels from it.  The buttons cost $1.27 for a pair and the fabric cost about $3.50 for two tops.  So a pair of hanging dish towels cost about $7.73 in materials to make and it takes me about 70 minutes to make two from the cutting out the top to sewing on the button.

Fat Quarter Time

    I did some fabric shopping on Etsy.  I finally found a fat quarter bundle that I couldn't live without.  I bought two fat quarter sets of Bake Sale by Lori Holt of Bee in My Bonnet for Riley Blake.  Those colors and prints are perfect.  I'm planning lovely napkins and hanging dish towel toppers with these fun kitchen prints.

 

More Kitchen Accessories

    I took some time out this week to make some hanging dish towels.  I bought the brown towel to make hanging towels for my hostess on Thanksgiving.  The chicken towels will be mine.  I found the chicken towel in my stash and I love the colors in it, so I had to make some hanging towels for me. 

    These lovely potholders were made on my Harrisville 7" loom with Harrisville cotton loops for my daughter.  She told me that she loves these potholders because they fit her smaller hands better than the bigger ones I make with big squares of cotton and batting.  I made some of these potholders a few years ago for her and since she loves them so much I thought it was time I made her a few more.  I will definitely be teaching her how to make these for herself sometime in the future,   Each one only takes about an hour and fifteen minutes to make.  They are easy and fun to do.  I love picking the colors and putting crazy colors together.

    You guessed it, no progress on my Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt top.  I'm still working on row three.  I've been having too much fun finding other things to make. 

Evening Sewing

 

      Tonight I made some more hanging dishtowels for me and dear daughter.  I resisted the temptation to use Christmas fabric on these.  Instead I wanted to make something we could use all winter long.  The green fabric has tiny metallic embellishments on it.  I think these will be pretty enough to give those dark winter days a little lift.

    The fabric cost me about $3.00 (I only needed 10" x WOF), I bought two regular size dishtowels at Tuesday Morning for $4.99 and the buttons were $.20 each.  So I made four hanging dishtowels for less than $10.00.  They took me about  2  1/2 hours to make from start to finish.

Super Cool Hanging Dishtowels

   I was going to make these tomorrow, but I couldn't wait and started them tonight after dinner.  The tutorial is perfect in its instruction and I had no trouble getting these handy hanging dishtowels made for my dear daughter.  The only item I bought to make these towels were the bar mop towels.  I paid $5.48 for 6 towels at Walmart.  I had the top fabric, interfacing, thread, and buttons in my stash.

   One note I will make about this tutorial is that bar mop dishtowels should not be cut in half because they are shorter than a regular dishtowel.  Cutting the bar mop dishtowels in half make sections that are too short to make a good drying towel (ask me how I know, hehehehe).  Cutting 2" off each towel works much better and gives you just enough length for a nice hanging dishtowel.  So instead of using one towel to make two hanging dishtowels, you would use one bar mop towel for each hanging dishtowel.

   I love having hanging dishtowels in my kitchen and I'm really happy that I tried this tutorial.  I use my hanging dishtowels to dry my hands when they are wet and I like using bar mop towels for this kind of project because they are pretty cheap.

    I did take the pieces of the one towel I cut in half and made two little hanging dishtowels for me, but the terry sections on those two hanging dishtowels are really small, but I couldn't waste those two pieces of towel.

   Just in case you missed the previous post talking about these hanging dishtowels, I used the tutorial at Our Secondhand House blog, link here.

   I no longer hate making buttonholes.  Buttonholes always seemed so complicated and I would try to avoid them, but after making 10 buttonholes on my shower curtain the other day with my new Janome Horizon 7700, I feel like I could make buttonholes all day long.  I won't be avoiding buttonholes anymore.

       I have three more dishtowels left and I'll be using those to make three more hanging dishtowels.

Hanging Dishtowels

   I love, love, love hanging dishtowels in my kitchen to wipe my hands off after I've washed them or they are wet from cleaning up.  These towels are used for my hands only, I don't dry dishes with them or use them for anything else.  I made these real simple by cutting a huge cotton dishtowel in half (found them at JoAnn's, $8.99 for two towels that turn into four hanging dishtowels).  I gathered the cut end and sewed on some pretty fabric to brighten my kitchen.  This is the same fabric I made the crazy round potholders with.  I hemmed the sides of the fabric and just folded it over the gathered end of the dishtowel leaving it open for my ribbon to hang it.  So easy.  I finished three of them last night while I was watching T.V.