A Crafty Home Decor Hack

We love coming up with different tea towel designs. They can be perfect hostess gifts for dinner parties you may be attending, and they are a super easy way to transition your home with seasonal decor. To make your own tea towels or napkins with custom designs, we usually recommend creating an iron-on pattern or personalizing with paint. Before you can do this, though, you need to get your tea towels. There is a great selection of tea towels at home goods or kitchen supply stores like Sur La Table, but they are not always the most affordable. Because we believe in the power of DIY to make your life better and easier, of course we had to come up with a way around this! Today we are going to show you how to make your own set of tea towels from linen that you can pick up from your local fabric store.

Tools & Materials

  • Sewing Machine
  • Iron and Ironing Board
  • Rotary Cutter, Ruler and Mat
  • Sewing Pins
  • Linen (1 yard makes 4 tea towels)
  • Matching Thread

Steps

  1. Serge or zigzag cut edges and prewash fabric. Press with an iron and fold the fabric into quarters.
  2. Using a rotary mat, cutter and ruler, square up the serged edges. Next, trim off as little as possible on both folded edges and selvedge.
  3. You should now have 4 identical rectangles.
  4. Fold and press the first side up a 1/2-inch.
  5. Fold over again and press.
  6. Working counter-clockwise, fold and press the next side over a 1/2-inch. Fold over again and press.
  7. Open pressed folds on the second side and fold corner up to the press fold line (shown as a dotted line).
  8. Refold the second side and press the first fold.
  9. Refold the side again, creating a folded mitered corner. Press and pin to secure. Repeat steps 6-9 counter-clockwise around the remaining sides and corner.
  10. Sew edge closed to finish

This is one of those projects that is best explained visually, so be sure to follow the photo tutorial below for help!

Tips

Start by choosing your linen – you will be able to make 4 towels per yard. We found our European linen on fabric.com (links in Shop this Project). There are a few different types of linen you can buy, so pay attention to if you need to prewash your fabric or not. After you make your own tea towels, you can add any designs that you’d like! Browse through all of our DIY tea towels for inspiration. We decided to embellish this particular set with some pretty embroidery. Find our series of embroidery videos to show you how to create this design yourself! There is a video for each stitch, plus instructions on how to transfer patterns to your fabric. You can find an iron-on variation of our embroidered pattern here.

Get Inspired!

Take a look at our household sewing projects for more stylish and functional DIYs you can use in your home. Don’t miss one of our favorite home hacks, a no-slip hand towel for your bathroom or kitchen. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter for the latest and greatest, or subscribe to our daily or weekly newsletter for inspiration straight to your inbox. As always, you can become a part of our crafting community by checking out our membership options. Have fun making your gorgeous tea towels! ~ Lia & Team

White Linen | Coral Linen

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