DIY Neon Patterned Tea Towels
Can one ever have enough tea towels? Probably, but they are tough to resist and always make a darn good hostess gift. When we saw this post over on Purl Bee for mimicking vintage tea towels with help from your sewing machine, we had to give it a try. Instead of making the towels from scratch, we bought a stack of basic white ones from Amazon, and tricked them out with fancy stitches and neon thread. Read on to see how!
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– neon thread (orange, pink, yellow, green)
Tools:
– sewing machine
– pencil
– ruler
We couldn’t resist going fully neon with this one.
Use a pencil and ruler to create a whole bunch of designs. We drew out stripes, checks, chevron, and more stripes.
Don’t forget to get a little diagonal action going too :)
To decide on stitches, it’s best to consult the handbook that came with your sewing machine. Because we lost ours (whoops!), we used an extra tea towel to test out all of our stitch design options. It’s also a good idea to test on a similar material to see how each stitch comes out.
We started with a crazy diagonal squiggle. Sew along the lines you’ve drawn and be prepared to be patient with this more involved stitches. A steady hand is key, as is a good playlist or podcast.
Next up, a checkered print. This was inspired last week’s picnic post. We went with a sort of zig zag stitch for this one.
For our resident chevron option, we went for a bigger design to create a more subtle neon look.
This one is a more traditional tea towel pattern, with contrasting thread colors and stitch designs paired together an inch or two from the border of the tea towel.
Last, tons of stripes! We grouped three stripes together with an inch between each grouping.
And we’re done!
Don’t they look so great all stacked together? These would make for an awesome hostess gift, housewarming gift, or DIY wedding gift.
We love how all the different stitches look next to each other.
Which pattern is your favorite? Questions about how to create your own tea towels? Give us a shouting the comments below.
