How to Sew Easy Kitchen Tea Towels, 2 Ways
I have a great, easy kitchen sewing tutorial for you today! I wanted to sew a little something for Mothers Day gifts and I had the best little border print in my drawer, just perfect for some pretty, sewn tea towels. DIY kitchen towels are so easy and they make such sweet gifts. Also, these tea towels somehow last a very long time. I received a few from my sister when I was first married and while other kitchen towels have come and gone, I still use the ones she made!
I’ve since made even more tea towels for myself after scoring a couple of fun prints and a heathered linen at Hobby Lobby in the clearance bin recently. A ruffle and/or fun trim take these kitchen towels to the next level, so I went ahead and filmed a video tutorial to share with you here.
And of course, so that you don’t have to refer back to the video each time you want to make tea towels, you can purchase a convenient printable version of this project in my shop or on Etsy.
Let’s get to it!
How to Sew Easy Kitchen Tea Towels, 2 Ways
The Best Fabric for DIY Kitchen Tea Towels:
You definitely want natural fibers for this project, since they’ll be the most absorbent. I went with cotton and linen for mine, but I’ve also used just cotton. Quilting cottons come in so many fun prints, so it’s easy to personalize these towels if you’re making them for gifts. For my Mother’s Day versions, I had a cute strawberry print that I wanted to use. I had to cut them a bit smaller than I instruct in the video to make the most out of the fabric, but they turned out so cute! I back each one with a coordinating print and each of our moms received two towels.
Using only linen is also a great idea! Linen is super absorbent and has that homespun look. It’s also very likely to last for many years, so while you may not find many fun prints in linen fabric, it’s still a solid choice for tea towels.
My strawberry border print came from JoAnn, but here are some great cotton fabrics that would make great tea towels, including a very similar strawberry print (and oh my goodness, how cute is the Mushroom Buddies line!!) Find more border print cottons on fabric.com. There are some great ones!
As for ruffle fabric and trim options, the sky’s the limit. Choose any coordinating fabric for your ruffles, or raid your trim stash for rick rack, ball fringe and other fun choices.
My my mom and mother-in-law loved their gifted handmade tea towels. They live in Colorado where it snowed yesterday (it’s May!), so hopefully these added some summer vibes to their kitchen.
I’m loving the Palm Springs vibes of my new towels too. They make me want to get rid of all my other boring towels and only use these, ha!
If you enjoyed this tutorial and make some tea towels of your own, I’d love to see! Be sure and email me photos, or tag me on Instagram. And if you’d like another great idea for handmade kitchen gifts, check out my tutorial for how to sew oversized hot pads (it’s my most popular tutorial of all time!)
Happy sewing!
Nikki :)
Learn to hand quilt with minimal tools and without the perfectionism!