DIY Embroidered Hanging Towels.

Tis the season for making your loved ones smile! The way I enjoy doing that is making handmade gifts. These embroidered towels are a perfect example. I love to find cute and funny embroidery patterns from Embroidery Online and ScissorTail Stitches to embroider. There are so many patterns to choose from to fit anyone in your life. Not only are they kitchen towels easy to make they're also (somewhat) practical. Now I typically don't use them to wipe off my hands, but to each there own. Get the details below and make your own. 

Supplies:

• Embroidery Designs: Coffee Time, Reasons to Wine Sayings, But First, Coffee
• Embroidery Thread
• Ultra Clean & Tear Stabilizer
• Brother SE1900 Sewing & Embroidery Machine
• 1/2 yd. cotton fabric
• 1/2 yd. interfacing
• flour sack towels 
• buttons

Draft and cut out the pattern template above. I used these measurements but you can alter it to be longer or wider. You will want to use a medium weight interfacing to fuse on the front piece of the top part of the towel. 

For the towel portion I used flour sack towels. I didn't have to finish any edges and they're a nice material to embroider on. Make sure to pre-wash and press before you embroider and press. 

I cut each one in half and trimmed down to 11.5" in length. The width was about 26". I was able to make 2 embroidered towels with each one. 

Prep your towel to embroider. Mark the center of the towel and mark about 3" up from the bottom hem. This is about where you want the bottom of the design to be. 

Hoop with a medium weight stabilizer. 

Begin embroidery...

Meanwhile...let's sew the top (topper) of the towel

• press interfacing to the front part of the towel
• place front and back right sides together
• stitch around leaving 1/4" open at the bottom. (1/4" seam allowance)
• clip corners 
• flip right sides out and press
• press the bottom 1/4" under 

Now add the button/button hole. 

Use your buttonhole presser foot and machine instructions to stitch a button hole along the center of the top. Remember this will flip over to the right side so you will want to do the top stitch on the back side of the towel. 

Position the button to be centered on the front about where the edge diagonals off. You can adjust according to your oven handle as well. That's what I used for reference. Sew the button on. 

• Once embroidery is complete, remove the tear way stabilizer and press. 
• Fold the towel in an accordion like manner making sure the front measures about 7" (or the same as your topper). 
• Place folded towel sandwiched in between the topper front and back (about 1/2" up).
• Pin into place. 

Topstitch the opening into place and continue around the topper edges.

For the Wine towel it was a ruffled one so I baste stitched the top of the towel edge. Pulled the strings to create a ruffle that fit perfectly into the topper and repeated the above steps. 

And that's it! I kind of went crazy and wanted to make about a dozen but now I have a set of gifts for anyone in my life.