Initial Hand Towels

Every year at Christmas, I like to make family members, as well as myself, a hand-made something.  It is usually an ornament, but this year I chose to make an Initialed hand towel.  The finished one looks like this.

I bought plain cotton hand towels to use.  I love to use kitchen towels but I wanted something a little thinner this time.

This is before I ironed the towel.  I then took a large letter stencil (you can choose from all types of letters), find the center of the towel and determine where you want the initial to be on the towel.  Next,  trace the letter with a fine pencil.  Some people choose to paint directly on the fabric with the stencil, but I find there can be bleeding and then you've ruined a perfectly good towel.

 I took black fabric paint and a fine tip paint brush and filled in the pencil marks being very careful.  Be sure to put a piece of paper or cardboard underneath just in case it bleeds through.  Mine didn't, but it might on other fabrics.  I then measured the bottom of the cloth to know who much ribbon to cut.  Each cloth can be slightly different so be sure to measure or you could be short on your ribbon.

 After measuring and cutting the ribbon, I hemmed up the edges with my sewing machine before pinning to bottom of cloth.  I sewed this ribbon on the bottom then topped the lace ribbon with a smaller ball trim.

There you have it.  A pretty hand towel for anyone's home.  I like white when giving as a gift because it will usually match most decors.