A dear colleague of mine is leaving for new pastures, and I wanted to have a special leaving present for her that is also useful. Since she’ll have a new house and all, what better than a unique item for the household. I’ve been in the midst of quilting and patchworking, so I had the idea to customise towels.
I bought a pack of good quality towels and washed them 60 degrees then tumble drying them, so that most of the potential shrinkage was already gone. I did the same with the fabric scraps I got in a big cheap bundle from eBay, washing all of them on 60 degrees to make sure there won’t be any shrinkage or colour bleed, then went to cutting. Towels usually have a woven band, a perfect place for embellishment.
Having cut all the wee rectangles (width of woven bands of towels – wider for the bath towels and narrower for the hand towels – plus 1 cm each side to turn over) I then sewed nice long strips together, ironed, and then pinned onto the towels.
I first meant to do fancy hand-stitching, but when I’d sewn the strips onto the towels by machine I rather liked the simplicity of the stitching, which doesn’t take anything away from the colourful fabrics. And here they are:
Last but not least, the towel stacks got special hangers in the top middle, because one never knows how one wants to hang up one’s towels, and get a nice bit of ribbon. I can’t wait to give it to my colleague! Hope she’ll like the towels and will think fondly of her time here, whenever she uses the cheerful towels.
Project C365: Creative Portfolio Blog 