Needles and a Pen » Knitting, Sewing, and Nursing School

TUTORIAL FOR THESE TOWELS IS LOCATED HERE

Another long-time-coming kitchen project crossed off the list!  I used this tutorial for making some kitchen towels to tie to the oven–I’m pretty sure the white towels I used were even the exact ones from the tutorial (bar mop towels from Target).

While I love the look of this one, I realized that it wasn’t very practical–when I wipe my hands I want lots of nice nubby towel fabric–I don’t want to be hitting quilting cotton, so for the rest of the towels I only embellished the top portion of the towel, leaving plenty of hand-drying room below.

(Isn’t it nice that I have such crappy appliances and cupboards to really ‘sell’ the retro feel?  😉 )

We’ve been pretty hobo when it comes to towels for a good long while–all too often using old cloth diapers from Will’s baby days (the same towels/rags/cloth diapers that I use as pot holders).  But now we’ll have pretty towels all tied to the oven, and even better, I was inspired by my efforts to improve the kitchen and I organized our ‘linen cupboard’ and bought a little box for Ellie’s bibs and a box for our towels and now we’ll actually be able to find and use the appropriate tool for the job.  (It’s a little bit of a miracle after 5 years of tossing them all in a jumbled mess and never being able to find anything.)

In my organizing I came across two old nursing covers, and since we’re done with babies and it was tough to decide what to do with them…and then I realized that I could use quilting for what it was actually designed as–re-purposing fabric!  I cut the straps and metal rings off the covers and tossed them into my scrap container, and felt oh-so-wholesome about doing so!

My productivity has slowed to a dreary trickle this week, because I’ve been going to bed at 8pm.  I realized that in my week of doing this I lost 28 hours of sewing/productive time!  On the other hand, I gained over an entire day of sleep in just a single week, so no wonder I have been able to dodge the cold that has taken down the rest of my family!

Last week was ‘kitchen’ week.  I’ve had this Nicey Jane fabric for over 6 months, and making some tablecloths to match my revamped chairs has long been on my list.  I was holding off until I got a serger…and then I was holding off until I felt inspired to work with spring colors…and then I was holding off until I felt like doing something really mindless…and finally I did it just to check them off my list.

I’m not in love with them, but they are done and the fabric is being useful!

I was going to make a patchwork version, but didn’t end up with enough scraps, and decided it was too much work for a tablecloth, anyway.  I’ve been using the scraps on towels and potholders that I will share later!

Since this is kind of boring, I’ll also share my three current favorite mugs (I have a weird thing about mugs).  For Easter we had hot chocolate with peeps and I took a few pictures:

This is my jadeite mug that I got at an antique mall last month.

I got this rad one off Etsy a year or two ago (and gave my sister one that reverses–it says team edward on the front and team jacob on the back in case she’s feeling a little undecided.  Sadly there is no Team Emmett mug.  [the book emmett, not the movie emmett.])

This one had to come home with me from Barnes and Noble it’s both retro AND has a rooster.

(PS–I like that in my head posting about mugs makes this LESS boring.)  😛