How to Make a Yo-Yo Tea Towel

Create beautiful gifts for friends and family by sprucing up store-bought tea towels. With just a few supplies and minimal sewing skills, you can craft wonderful yo-yo trimmed tea towels that look like they were purchased in a kitchen boutique. Aside from buying tea towels, a yo-yo tea towel can be crafted using fabric from your scrap basket and old buttons. You can whip up several of these towels in an evening.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Tea towel,15 inches wide by 25 inches
• Lightweight fusible web
• Ruler
• Pencil
• Scissors
• Scrap fabric
• Iron
• Sewing machine
• Rick rack, 1 yard
• Straight pins
• Compass
• Hand sewing needle and thread
• Buttons, eight

1. Trace a 2 inch wide by 16 inch long rectangle strip on the paper side of lightweight fusible web and cut out. Iron a scrap of fabric slightly larger than the strip to remove any wrinkles and lay wrong side up on your ironing surface. Place the fusible web glue side down on the fabric and iron to adhere. Cut out the fabric using the edge of the fusible web strip as your guide.

2. Peel the paper from the back of the fused fabric rectangle. Turn the short ends to the back a half-inch and finger press. Position the strip, glue side down, across the short bottom end of the tea towel, 1 1/2 inches from the end. If there is a woven band across the end of your tea towel, place the strip over the band. The folded ends of the strip should be even with the sides of the tea towel. If they are not, readjust the folds to fit. Iron the strip to the tea towel to secure. Note: The folded ends will not adhere.

3. Cut two lengths of rick rack 16 inches long. Center and pin each rick rack length to the long edges of the fabric rectangle. Tuck the excess under the folded short ends. Top-stitch the rick rack to the fabric rectangle, stitching down the center of the rick rack strip. Top-stitch each end of the fabric rectangle, as close to the tea towel sides as possible.

4. Lay the fabric you have chosen for your yo-yo medallions on your work surface with the wrong side up. Draw eight circles on the fabric, 3 inches in diameter, using a compass. Cut the circles out. For each circle, fold the edge to the wrong side and sew a running stitch around the circle using a hand sewing needle and thread. Pull the gathers up, closing the circle. Knot and cut the thread. Flatten the circle with the gathered closure centered on the top, completing the yo-yo.

5. Evenly space the yo-yo medallions across the tea towel on the fabric rectangle and pin. Choose eight buttons to decorate your tea towel. Place one button over the gathered closure of each yo-yo. Hand stitch the buttons through the layers of the yo-yo medallions, fabric rectangle and tea towel. Knot and cut the thread to finish off.

References

• Zakka Life