Dish Towel Shortcuts

As promised, my little follow up to the Dish Towel tutorial for Deck the Halls Blog Hop:

This is a pretty quick little tutorial that makes a nice a gift, but I have two ways that make it even quicker.  You just need two things - a hemmer foot and an embroidery machine or attachment.  If you don't have those, no worries, it is still pretty easy and quick to make the original version.

I have a Hemmer Foot #63 for my Bernina, which is a round edge hemmer foot.  So I simply round the corners on my ruffle piece and start hemming along the top of one short side.  No need to press or turn anything under!

The hemmer foot has a little spiral-y feed and the fabric wraps around it twice, creating a neat little hem with no raw edges.  Just keep going all the way around until you are back at the top of the other short side and attach to the towel just like in the original directions.  If you don't have a hemmer foot you might want to consider putting one on your list for Santa.  It is one of my favorite sewing tools ever!  I just got it for my birthday last spring, but have used it a ton.

The other time saver is to use an embroidery machine to create a letter instead of the applique.  Just keep in mind that if your towel is not a flat weave it helps to do stabilizer on the top to make your letter look its best.  You can see where I forgot to and then added a sheet of stabilizer.  The portion without the stabilizer has little bits of red towel coming between the stitches.  The portion with the stabilizer looks  much cleaner.

I usually buy wash away stabilizer on ebay, you can find it searching for "solvy" or "topping."  Even though it dissolves in water when you wash it, you can tear it off when you finish your project, so you don't have to wash before gifting.

I hope those tips help to make an easy little project even quicker.  Come back tomorrow for the Sew, Mama, Sew Giveaway Day!