OK, so the knitted handtowels didn’t work. Total bummer. But I still needed something to do the job in this bathroom. I’ve been making do for far too long with just wandering into the kitchen with wet hands looking for a mostly clean rag. And since I had already committed to this cute bathroom stand, I was determined to go with a stack of towels, which means they needed to be special. So I went to my favorite medium for personalization – machine applique.
Except. It didn’t work. I tried different stabilizers, I tried different needles, I just could. NOT. get the stitching to stay in place. My best guess is that these towels have a weave that’s too open to anchor the stitches, but I might just be pulling that out of my nose. I was determined to make this work, so I kept experimenting and came up with a way to do machine applique without the machine.
Find an image or font you like and make it the size you want to fit your handtowel. I made sure to check it against a folded handtowel so I knew the letter would look great all stacked up together.
Cut a piece of fabric large enough to cut your image out of and iron fusible web to the back side of it.
Cut the image out of the fabric and iron it onto the towel.
Cut a long piece of embroidery floss and thread the whole thing through a needle. You’ll use all six strands that make up the one piece of embroidery floss. Tie a knot in the very tip of the other end. To bury the knot, slide your needle underneath the ironed on image, between it and the towel, then come up through the iron on at the very edge. This will hide your knot under the applique so you won’t see it on either side of the towel. Needle down along the edge of the applique, then skip ahead a little bit and bring the needle back up.
Go back down in the same place you ended your last stitch. This is just a basic backstitch, so if any of my instructions aren’t clear, just google that and you’ll find more help than you can use.
That’s all there is to it, cut out, iron on, and backstitch all the way around. The only thing that takes any practice is getting as close to the edge of the iron-on as you can without falling off.
I’m just nuts about them. They look so classy I’m surprised Pottery Barn isn’t selling something just like them.
I had the same issue when I wanted to put personalized appliques on hooded towels I made for the kids. In desperation I glued them on with white glue. I sewed the edges of the appliques and then washed the towels. Glue came out, stitches held on. It's all good.
What a great tip! I'll definitely give that a try!
What a lovely tutorial on Monogrammed Handtowels, you sound like crafty.
Deep thought! Thanks for conttiburing.