Saturday, September 8, 2012

Sewing again! Dish towel fun.

Two things:

First, it has been a while since I've been able to sew. I had a trigger finger and my carpal tunnel syndrome repaired. that meant that I had to hold off on doing any real sewing. I'm able to sew again and that makes me very happy.

Second, I need dish towels. Rather than run out and buy some, I decided to use an old bath towel that has seen better days. I cut out two pieces that were not damaged, serged the edges, and then tried to decide what to do. I had a smidgen of a cutter quilt left, so I cut out hearts and zig-zagged them onto the dish towel base. I try to make sure to sew over each old original seam; they're hand sewn and prone to come apart. Plus, these towels are going to be used and washed, so it's best to reinforce every seam I can.

I used a tight zig-zag stitch to applique the hearts in place and then applied Fray-Check for good measure.

I went through my leftover bias tape and found a length of red. I also zig-zagged that by machine and that was that.

Now I have a dish towel and one more blank ready to decorate. I have three more patchwork hearts, so I'll probably use those, but in a different arrangement somehow.

Lesson learned is that our bath towels are not dead when they're about ready to be retired. Take a look and see what you have. This was a quickie afternoon project, but you can make it as fancy or as simple as you like. The bottom line is that it's a true scrap project. I bought nothing. (I don't count the thread; I always have thread on hand and I wasn't as concerned about a 100% match for these.)

Now that I have a healed hand, I am finding I have a better than healed hand. I can hand sew again! In a very short while, I get to try embroidering again, and that makes me more than happy. I haven't embroidered for almost 30 years. And guess what? I have lots of old DMC floss, so I'll be scrap stitching then too!

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