DIY Nautical Tea Towels

One last tea towel posting and then I’ll move onto another sewing project.  This time I made tea towels for my friend that lives on Lake Conroe so I went with a nautical theme.

DIY Nautical Tea Towels

And just want to say that there are NO sailboats on Lake Conroe.  But sail boats are a lot cuter than pontoon or fishing boats.

I pulled the fish from sweetclipart.com.  I couldn’t find a sailboat that I liked, so I just drew my own. Pretty easy with a ruler and a piece of paper.  If you want to use my rendering,  just click on the sailboat and print or save to your computer. 

DIY Nautical Tea Towel

I had purchased the Michael Miller nautical fabric to use in a boy baby quilt I am making. See those anchors in the upper left hand corner?

Boy Quilt

I did a quick calculation of how much I needed for the quilt and decided I could spare 5″ of it. I had some polka dot fabric in the same color that I had stashed away and used it for the back of the color band.

So here’s basically the same instructions that I used for the mermaid and flower tea towels from the last two weeks.  Only difference is the appliques and the size of the color band.

After washing and drying all the fabrics, I cut a 17″ x 20″ piece from Kaufman Essex Wide Linen then hemmed three sides (two long and one short) using the tutorial for clever corners from Sew4Home.com.  The towel is then 16″ x 19 1/2″ with one raw short edge.

The color band is made from two 5″ x 17″ coordinating fabrics.

DIY Nautical Tea Towel

The anchors are an obvious one way print, so make sure when you attach the color band to the tea towel, they are going in the right direction! Then I stitched the two fabrics together with a 1/4″ seam.

DIY Nautical Tea TowelCenter the tea towel fabric on the color band–there should be 1/2″ on each side. The right side of the anchor fabric goes against the right side of the tea towel.  Stitch together with a 1/2″ seam.

DIY Nautical Tea Towel

  Turn under and press the raw edge 1/2″.  Bring the right sides of the color band together and stitch 1/2″ seams on the sides.

DIY Nautical Tea Towel

Clip corners and turn right side out.  Stitch along the top, making sure you catch the top of the back piece.

DIY Nautical Tea Towel

Now make your appliques using Heat n’ Bond Lite.  Press onto the tea towel, stitch into place with a satin stitch.

DIY Nautical Tea TowelDIY Nautical Tea Towel

Easy Peasy!

And here they are at the Lake House!

DIY Nautical Tea Towel

Next week, I promise, no tea towels!

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