Edited to add: It was brought to my attention that it isn’t actually Anthropologie who makes the Primal Cuts dishtowel, but a very talented indie designer Sara Selepouchin. She sells her butcher’s diagram dishtowels and many other amazing things at her shop, girls can tell. They are beautifully designed (the coffee one is my favorite) and professionally printed–definitely not a slap dash affair like mine.

Ellen asked me to do a little tutorial for her handMAYde month and I was happy to oblige.  There were some fabulous tutorials for weddings, babies, and kids, but this last week is for knock offs. Being the cheapskate that I am this was the week for me. I was perusing everyone’s favorite store to knock off and saw these dishtowels:

Actually, last christmas I wanted to silkscreen a set of butcher diagram dishtowels for presents, but that meant learning how to silkscreen, so the idea kind of fizzled. Sadly, I still don’t know how to silkscreen. I thought maybe freezer paper stencils would work, but then the images would loose a lot of detail. Iron on paper or ink jet transfer? Well then you’d have to find and buy supplies and wrestle with your printer. I wanted a quick and dirty project. So I went downstairs to my studio, rustled up some supplies and this is what I got:

to market, to market dishtowel:

a tutorial in 3 easy steps

materials:

• large embroidery hoop
• flour sack towel
• fine point fabric pen
• image to trace (2 copies)

This is the fabric pen I used and it worked surprisingly well. I haven’t the faintest idea where I got it, but I’m guessing some crafty big box store. The flour sack towel I picked up at the grocery store a while back (3 for 5$). They shrink up a lot in the wash, so you should probably wash, dry and iron them before you start. The image might get all weird if you do it after.

directions:

1. fit your embroidery hoop on your towel where you want the image to go. Make sure to put the hoop on upside down–so the towel is right side up, but flat on the table.

2. Then just trace the image. I found it handy to have another copy of my picture  I could refer to as I traced. The flour sack towel is easy enough to see through, but it’s nice to know exactly what the image should look like without picking the towel up to peek under it.

3. Heat set the image with your iron. And that’s it! Quick and dirty–and pretty stylish too.