Image Transfer Towels - Tutorial!! (lots and lots of pics!)

you saw all the finished towels i posted yesterday, and that got your head spinning with ideas of what you'd put on your own towels, right?

these are super quick and easy to do, despite what my millions of pictures may lead you to believe! they're perfect for quick gifts or to add a pop of colour and individualism to a boring kitchen. and they're pretty low cost, using only a small amount of cotton and transfer paper for each towel. the towels themselves can often be found in dollar stores, and i watch the kitchen clearance section at department stores for great deals.


so here's how to make them!

stuff you'll need -
- tea towels, obviously. preshrink them, please!
- white cotton fabric. again, preshrink it!
- a printer
- iron on transfer paper for light coloured fabric (get the one that corresponds to your printer type)
- sewing machine and white thread
- iron and ironing board (or a towel on a table, that works too!)
- pins
- lint roller or packing tape


Step 1

find your images, size them, and reverse them so that they'll transfer the right way (you may be able to skip this step now and do it when you print the page. i flip them in photoshop).

you can use any image you'd like, use google image search to look for pictures with a certain theme, use photographs you've taken, wander through flickr, scan in drawings you've done, or take advantage of the amazing clip art available on the wide wide web. i'm particularly fond of the digital stock art available from Urban Threads, any of them would make amazing towels! keep copyright in mind when choosing your images, which admittedly i didn't do for some of my earlier towels!

open a new document in Word and adjust your margins to make them as small as possible - this lets you fit bigger images on the transfer sheet!

import your images into the Word file and adjust the size. i like to fit 4 images onto each page, the images are the perfect size for tea towels. if your images are more horizontal than vertical, you will want to change the orientation of the page to landscape.

Step 2

print the images out onto iron on transfer paper, following the instructions included with the transfer paper. there are a multitude of brands available when it comes to iron on transfer paper. i personally love Avery, i've had such good results with them over the years. keep in mind that they DO expire. i have a bad habit of continually losing half packs in my studio, and buying more instead of searching because "i'll use them eventually". the folks at Avery say that the sheets should stay good for up to 5 years, my experience is closer to 1 year!

for this example, i was only printing out 2 images, so rather than wasting the other half of the page, i made them a bit smaller than the images in the example above, and i placed them sideways on the page.

Step 3

carefully trim around the images and pull out your white cotton fabric. please DON'T buy your cotton fabric from somewhere like walmart! go to an actual quilt shop, and buy it there. it will be a little bit more expensive, but the quality will be SO much better, it's totally worth it in the long run. i have towels that i've had for years, washing them weekly in hot water, and they still look fabulous. i'm convinced that it's because i use a good quality fabric. the better quality cotton is smoother and more tightly woven than the cheap stuff, and the images transfer so much better.

Step 4

you need the fabric to be completely clear of fuzz when transferring images, so haul out your lint roller, or wrap some tape around your hand.

Step 5

iron your cotton fabric to smooth out any wrinkles and to pre-heat the fabric. it'll accept the transfer better if it's already warm!

Step 6

lay the transfer on your fabric and press it on. follow the instructions in the transfer package, which usually say something like "heat iron to hottest setting possible for fabric type. press transfer using a firm strong grip, moving iron over transfer smoothly" i find that i usually don't have to press the transfer for as long as the instructions say, because they're fairly small.

Step 7

look closely, and you'll notice that the transfer bled a little bit around the edges of the paper backing. that's okay! actually, it's great! that's the sign i use to know when the image is fully transferred!

Step 8

trim the cotton around your transfer. i usually leave about 3/4" around.

Step 9

now we're going to fold under the edges, leaving just a very very small amount of the fabric showing in the front. after lots of experimenting and very hot fingers, i've discovered the easiest way to do this! lay the transfer face down on the ironing board, then flip it up, keeping the edge face down.

Step 10

fold the edge over, bringing the transfer to lay face up on the ironing board. it sounds complicated to explain, but it's super easy!

Step 11

continue folding the edges over until you have pressed all 4 edges under. if one of your edges ends up a little crooked like mine did, just press it out flat and then try turning it under again. no worries!

Step 12

see? all folded under neatly! you can also see the transfer here, it will show through the backside of the fabric. now's a good time to take note of which is the top! you might want to put a little pencil mark there, so that you don't accidentally sew the transfer on upside down! (learn from my mistakes, okay?)

Step 13

press your tea towel to remove any wrinkles and fold it in half to determine the centre.

Step 14

in my example i'm applying my transfer to the corner of the towel, but on the finished towels i posted yesterday, they're all applied in the centre. if your towel is a woven plaid, you're in luck, that makes things easier! if the weave is slightly off grain, feel free to apply your image following the weave, not the actual centre. trust me, it's a lot less obvious that way!

Step 15

pin your transfer to the towel. don't put your pins directly through the transfer itself, slip them through the little white edge that we left. envision how you're going to sew the transfer on, and pin accordingly. i sew my transfers in a clockwise motion, so i always pin with the heads to the left so that i can easily pull them out when i get to them.

Step 16

off to the sewing machine! load your machine up with white thread, and make sure you're using a new needle. because we're dealing with a fairly fine woven fabric, we'll be using a sharp needle as opposed to a ballpoint needle, and one in a fairly small size. like i said in the t-shirt sleeve tutorial, i think the sizes are different in the US, but you should still be able to tell which one is smallest!

Step 17

starting a corner, begin stitching around the edge of the transfer, only stitching in the little white edge we left when we pressed it.

Step 18

when you get to a corner, lower your needle, lift your presser foot and pivot!

Step 18b

take a quick detour to pet the cat. she's trying to help, can't you tell? jeez mom!

Step 19


the transfer is now sewn on! because we used white thread on white fabric, the stitching is almost invisible and doesn't detract from the transfer at all. i prefer to use a white bobbin thread. if you try to match the bobbin thread with the towel colour and the tension on your machine is off even the slightest, the coloured bobbin thread can show through on the front. besides you'll rarely see the backside of your towel when it's hung anyway!

Step 20

now give the transfer another quick press, because this will be the last time you'll be able to apply heat to it. starting with the corner, peel up the protective paper.

Step 21

when you've got a good quality transfer, it will come off smoothly, and will leave a slight "ghost" image on the protective paper.

Step 22

not really a step, because you're done! wasn't that easy? now go make more them!


i hope you liked the tutorial! i love comments, please let me know what you think, or if you make some, or what your ideas are for your own towels!

Tutorial - Mending a Sweater Snag - easiest thing ever!

EDIT: hi craftzine readers! welcome!

i promised another mending tutorial, didn't i!

this is barely tutorial worthy, because it's SO easy. i thought everyone knew how to do this, but when i fixed a sweater of my little brother's, he and his girlfriend were AMAZED! it's funny how some things just seem like second nature to you because you can't remember not knowing it, but it's completely foreign to others.

anyway! onto the tutorial!

start with a sweater that's snagged, obviously! this sweater wasn't the best for photos, because it's so thin and see through, but it was the only i hadn't already fixed!


now haul out your needle threader. i have a fancy clover one, because i'm obsessed with their sewing notions (really), but the cheapies work fine too! needle threaders can be bought at a craft store, or even at a dollar store, and they're often found in basic sewing kits if you can't find them individually to buy.

from the inside of the sweater, poke the needle threader wire through the hole where the snag is.


this is the tricky part! guide the threads of the sweater, the snag, into the little diamond wires. once they're in, gently pull the needle threader back to the inside of the sweater.

you're done! if the snag really pulled your sweater, you might need to gently tug it a bit, just to get the fibers straightened out.

there will still be a small hole on most sweaters, but trust me, no one will notice it except you!

super simple, right? i told you!

but wait! there's more tutorial!

some people find getting the snag into the needle threader to be a bit of a hassle, and i'm definitely one of them. depending on the weight of your sweater, it can be pretty darn fussy!

instead of a needle threader, you can also use dental floss threaders. i LOVE these, they're such a great invention. of course, i don't have braces, and i can floss using regular floss, but it's fabulous for crafty purposes! (i use them a lot to string beads on yarn for crocheting)


again, start with a snag (aren't i lucky that my sweater had enough snags to do this twice?!)


the floss threaders are easier to use because instead of trying to push the needle threader through from the inside, hoping you're in the right spot, you're going to push the hard end of the floss threader through the sweater from the outside. gently slide the end of the floss threader through right where the snag started.


again, fiddle with the snag and push it into the opening of the floss threader. it's a still a little bit fiddly, but since the floss threader had a much bigger opening, it's less fiddly than the needle threader.

done! again, you might need to gently tug the sweater fabric.



can you see where the snag was? it's practically invisible!

Tutorial - mending t-shirt sleeves by shortening them - super easy!

March is Mending Month over at blog.craftzine.com, and i've really been enjoying the posts. Week 1 included patching a sweater sleeve, darning and hand sewing a blind hem. Week 2 included iron on patches (with really fabulous packaging!), fabric yo-yos to cover stains or holes on a skirt, and removing under arm stains. Week 3 has stylish stitches for mending jeans, a super cute moth hole fix for a sweater, and mending torn upholstery. you should definitely go check it out!

i have to admit that i don't do a lot of mending. it's not that i throw things out, it's just that i rarely need to mend things. i'm sure if i had kids i'd be mending a lot more (my brother was SO hard on the knees of his pants when he was little!). as it is, my "kids" just leave tiny little holes in my sheets as they chase each other across the bed and over me, but i ignore them, because they're just gonna do it again!(i think i'm officially the crazy cat lady now that i've called them my kids!)

but i do have a few mending jobs once in a while, and inspired by all the fabulous tutorials that craftzine has been posting, i decided to write up a tutorial last night as i did one of them. i'm going to do the second job later today, and i'll post that as well.

my sister asked me several weeks ago to fix her boyfriend's shirt. she sews just as well as i do, but used the excuse that she doesn't have a serger, so i had to do it. right. the tshirt is one of the typical Hanes style, ie: boxy with minimal stretch!

unfortunately, E's favourite long sleeve tshirt had a run-in with his washing machine, which resulted in a large L shaped tear on one of the sleeves. while i could have tried to mend the tear, it would have been visible no matter what, so he requested that the shirt be made into a short sleeved tee instead.


i took a look at a short sleeved tshirt in my closet, and made a note of the angle the sleeve was cut on. you don't want to cut the sleeve straight up and down perpendicular to the armhole, because you'll end up with sleeves that are short around your arm, and long underneath it! i used my cutting board and rotary cutter, but if you don't have one, scissors work just fine! i'd suggest you use a ruler and a chalk pencil though, to make sure that you cut in a straight line!


i then took the piece that i cut off and tried to use it as a guide to shorten the other sleeve too. oops.

it's much more accurate to line up the shoulder and armhole seams on both sides of the shirt and shorten the other sleeve that way!

if you have a serger, now is when you'll serge the hem edge that you've just cut. use the stretch knit stitch if your machine has it, don't worry about it if it doesn't, because this style of shirt doesn't have a whole lot of stretch to it anyway.

if you don't have a serger, don't sweat it! you can leave the hem unfinished, since tshirt knits don't really fray, or you could zigzag the edges.

after you finish the hem, you'll want to press the sleeve. when working with knits, your steam iron is your best friend! your hem finish might have stretched the fabric a bit, and we don't want that, so use lots of steam!

let it cool a bit so that you don't burn your fingers (maybe that's just me!), and fold up the seam. take a look at the bottom of the shirt, and you'll see that knits generally have a fairly deep hem. i folded mine up about an inch, maybe a little less. pin like crazy! when working with knits, pins are your other best friend! (hopefully the pins and the steam iron don't get jealous of each other, that might get ugly...)


press it! remember the difference between pressing and ironing, that's especially important with knits that stretch if you pull the iron across them. i find it easier to press with the pins still in, but some people say that you shouldn't. i say that it depends on the fabric and the pins! these pins have flat heads, so they won't leave big marks in the fabric, and i know that this fabric is pretty forgiving, i'll be able to steam out any marks later. plus, and this is important, i've pressed things using these pins before, so i KNOW that they won't melt into my fabric!

i'm using a sleeve pressing board on top of my regular ironing board, so that i can rotate the sleeve around it while pressing. if you don't have one, that's cool, just use your regular iron board. (but keep an eye out at thrift stores and garage sales, cause they're super handy)

time to sew! i'm using a ballpoint needle that's a 9/70. i think the sizing is different for you americans, but the important thing is that you want a thin needle. this fabric isn't very thick, and i'm only sewing through 2 layers, so we don't want big holes. the most important thing is that i'm using a ballpoint needle. ALWAYS use a ballpoint needle when sewing with knits! sharps are, as the name says, sharp! they cut through the fabric fibers, which is fine for woven fabrics, but you don't want that for a knit. ballpoint needles are slightly rounded, so they'll slip between the fibers instead.


if your machine has a removable cover, remove it now! a lot of machines have a free arm once you remove the cover, which is great for sewing around things like sleeves.

if you have a really old machine that doesn't have a free arm, it'll still work, it just might be a little bit tricky. don't poke yourself with the pins!

start sewing! line your needle up with the edge of the hem. you want to be close enough to edge to keep the hem from rolling inside the sleeve, but you also don't want to chance sewing off the edge either! it's good to pick a spot on your machine throat plate that you're going to follow, and if the needle isn't in the exact position you want when the edge is lined up with the throat plate spot, it's sometimes easier to just move the needle!

i'm sewing on the inside here, so that i can ensure that i catch the edge. you should have the same matching thread in both your bobbin and your needle, so this shouldn't matter.

if you look closely at the sleeve of your tshirt, or at the hem, you'll see that there are two lines of stitching. if you look at the back, you'll see that there's a zigzag sort of thing between the two lines. you can create that effect by using a twin needle, but the damn things are mighty expensive for just a mending job, so we're going to imitate the look instead.

so turn the sleeve right side out! lay it on the machine, and line the edge of your presser foot up with the stitching you did in the last step. for this step we won't worry about following the lines on the throat plate, we want to follow the stitching only.


you're done! press the hem again, using lots of steam so that the knit will spring back into place. ta-da!


this is a great fix is you have shirts where the sleeve is too short too, you can easily make them into 3/4 length or short sleeves. if you're small, you might have clothes that are technically "children's", complete with slighter shorter sleeves, or you may just have long arms!