Kitschy Rose Tea Towels!

i wanted to make a present for Leah in appreciation of everything she's done for alwaysinmyroom and i with the master crafters brother campaign, but it had to be quick, because i wanted to mail it to her when i mailed all the stuff i made. (she and her husband took awesome pictures of everything for me!)

i was wracking my brain trying to figure out what i thought she'd like, what would fit in with her house, based on the little bit of it i saw in a magazine article ages ago, when i realized that non-traditional flower colours would totally fit with leah's love of kitsch!

did i mention that i decided to make these the night before i had to mail the package? oops!

so i drove around to multiple stores trying to find solid coloured tea towels that weren't white, and finally found this awesome green ones. score! i hustled home and preshrank them, and started going through my patterns while i was waiting for them to dry. i found the perfect roses on the Lace II memory card.

so i ironed the towels, marked the centre, and got to embroidering!


i used a tear away stabilizer on the backside, and a dissolving stabilizer on the front, since the towels had a bit of a waffle weave.

the next morning i trimmed around the dissolving stabilizer and then threw it in with a load of laundry, thinking it would dissolve easily in the washer while i went to my dr's appointment. when i got back, i tossed the load in the dryer without even checking the stabilizer. oops! when i pulled them out of the dryer to iron, right before i had to go mail the package, the stabilizer had dried into hard clumps around the embroidery!

so i gave up on the idea of mailing them along with everything else, and plopped them in a sink full of water, hoping that they were salvageable. when i got back from the post office, the stabilizer had dissolved, thank goodness! i threw them in the wash again (good thing i had laundry to do anyway!), and by the time they came out of the dryer, they were perfect. crisis averted!

i learned my lesson though! from now on i'm going to dissolve the majority of the stabilizer in the sink before i put the items in the washer! someone on craftster suggested spritzing them with a spray bottle full of warm water, which seems like a good idea as well. i REALLY dislike how the stabilizer feels on your hands as it dissolves (it's slimey! it grosses me out), so a spritz bottle sounds less better!



i love how the blue thread pops on the green!

after all that, i had to send them USPS anyway, but at least they turned out cute!