Thinking About Tea Towels
To be honest, I've never thought about tea towels very much before. I use them, of course, to dry my hands after rinsing dishes, to grab something hot from the microwave, or to cover dough that needs to rise, but I've never given much thought to how they look. The light yellow and blue plaid set I have now is pretty old, and not in a beautiful vintage way either. They have stains and worn spots and loose threads and I'm thinking it might be time for a change. (Not that I'll get rid of them quite yet, but I'll relegate them to the rag pile.)
So what brought about this change? Last month I entered three original designs in Spoonflower's tea towel design challenges. That experience made me appreciate that something practical can also be beautiful (or entertaining or helpful).
DIY Tea Towels
I'm going to share my designs, but first I wanted to ask you to think about tea towels in your own life. (Yes, I ask the most lofty and soul-searching questions on this blog!) Did you know you could make your own? You don't have to draw or paint or sew; you can use photos or handwritten recipes and have someone print them on fabric. There are Etsy shops that will make them for you (search the Etsy site for tea towel recipe). If you're comfort designing on a computer, you can create them yourself through a print-on-demand place like Spoonflower or Shutterfly. There are many online DIY videos with different techniques such as using transfer paper and liquid dye or using a Cricut machine. I think handwritten recipes are especially meaningful as just seeing a familiar handwriting can bring up a lot of memories.
3 Ideas for How To Use Tea Towels
1. Easy Home Decor
I tend to be a minimalist as far as holiday decorations, mostly because I'm a little lazy about them. So I'm thinking that maybe I could start by hanging a seasonal towel on the oven door to add some color and brightness to my kitchen, which is all white and beige neutrals.
You can also hang tea towels on the wall as artwork. Spoonflower sells magnetic wood hangers which allow you to switch out the towel occasionally. HGTV shows a more permanent framed version. Apartment Therapy also has a couple of DIY ideas.
Pictured here are two of my seasonal designs, Maple Leaves and Snowy Christmas Tree Landscape.
2. Themed Gift Baskets
Tea towels make an easy, colorful addition to a gift basket of themed items. For example, you could put together a basket of cocoa, marshmallows, and a mug with a tea towel featuring a cocoa recipe. Or pair a tea towel patterned with coffee mugs or coffee beans with a pound of their favorite blend. Or just choose a tea towel in the recipient's favorite color!
3. Reusable Gift Wrap
Make your gift more eco-friendly by wrapping it in a tea towel. The MyPoppet site shows a few examples. I especially like her example using a bottle of wine since that's a tough gift to wrap normally unless you have a box.
My Tea Towel Designs
I've been working on being more deliberate in my designs this year, so everything I've created has some sort of personal story or meaning behind it. I do get a percentage of any sales with my artwork (and that's always appreciated!), but I'm mainly entering these challenges to learn more about illustration. It's been so much fun! Here are the three tea towel designs I made:
Hot Cocoa Recipe
I remember my mom making me a version of this cocoa using the brown tin of Hershey's unsweetened cocoa powder. We might have had marshmallows on it occasionally, but that was probably it as far as extras. I don't think we had it often (we were more of a Swiss Miss instant packet type of family), but often enough that I remember it well. (I'll have to ask my mom how often she thinks she made this for us because I know that it's probably quite a different memory for someone doing the work!)
Not only did I draw all the elements for this Hot Cocoa Recipe, but I hand wrote the entire recipe. It's not a font!
2023 Calendar
I prefer monthly calendars over an annual one, so it was a challenge for me to come up with a design that I thought I wouldn't mind seeing for an entire year. I do like bright colors and watercolors, so this 2023 Calendar has both! I painted many swatches and then scanned my favorites. I drew the brushes, notebook, and watercolor paint box. I also hand-lettered the months and years, but the individual dates are a standard plain font for readability.
The photo below shows some of the watercolor swatches for the calendar, along with my box of watercolor paints and some of the flowers I drew on the coffee mugs for my Fika (Swedish Coffee Break) pattern.
Cheesy Joke
I am very fond of silly jokes and I do like cheese, although I can't eat it as much as I'd like. If given a choice of cheese for a sandwich, I usually choose provolone.
Designing this Cheese Grater Joke made me want to do a whole series of illustrated jokes. Again, I used hand lettering and drew the illustrations, but I did it all on a computer. While I was working on this, my friend K kept suggesting that I add a mouse (How can you have all that cheese and no mouse?), so I finally did. See if you can spot him!
More Designs
Any fabric design can be turned into a tea towel. After you click on the pattern you want on Spoonflower, look for the Home Decor link on the page and that will take you to all the finished items, including the tea towels. You can also buy fabric to sew your own. There's a nice post on best fabrics to use if you want to sew your own. Let's get this tea [towel] party started!