Embroidered Pleasant Kitchen towels - free pattern

Posie Gets Cozy is definitely one of our favorite crafty blogs, so we were pleased when CRAFT noted that its proprietor, Alicia Paulson, had posted some pretty days-of-the-week Pleasant Kitchen towel embroidery patterns. You can download them for free.

The patterns have a vintage feel and include designs like an egg cup, a Pyrex serving bowl, a "cheese lady," and an old-fashioned espresso pot. Alicia used relatively low-quality kitchen towels and added contrast fabric binding to their edges, but she suggests that you try Flour Sack Towels from P.O.S.H. if you'd like a nicer base.

There's a trick to getting this particular set of designs onto the fabric so that you can stitch them; I'll discuss it more after the break. It may not be what you think.

Ordinarily I would recommend that you use an iron-on transfer pencil to get the designs onto your fabric; such pencils are inexpensive and easy to find in craft stores. In this instance, though, Alicia warns against transfer pencils: the patterns are detailed enough that you need finer lines than a transfer pencil could give you, and the designs aren't reversed the way they would need to be, anyway.

Instead, she used a combination of water-soluble markers for the broken-line lettering, and Micron pen for the solid lines, tracing the design through the fabric. (This will be easier if both the design and the towel were taped, separately, to a sunlit window.) You'll find more details at her blog.

Also interesting: Alicia talks about her inspiration to make the towels, and shows off a silk-screened version of the embroidery designs that she received for Valentine's Day from her husband.

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