Vintage Ornaments Christmas Tea Towel - Free Sewing Pattern
Use my free pattern to create a Christmas tea towel with vintage style ornaments! Great for gift giving and holiday decor!
Bring some holiday cheer into your kitchen with this vintage ornament Christmas tea towel! It's easy to sew so it's a great last minute project, either for yourself or as a hostess gift.
Procuring good quality fabrics at a cheap rate at Home Depot using coupons by Raise and similar websites that tend to give us creative minds some relief in terms of the pocket pinch! After I use most of the fabric pieces, I usually have a pretty big stash of vintage fabric scraps that I love to pull out for projects like this! They're mostly too small to use on anything but appliques, but wow do they make some pretty appliques. Especially when they appliques are layered on a patterned fabric! So much print and pattern and color! To be honest, retro-style ornaments are especially fun made from scraps of vintage fabrics.
I've got a free pattern for you below.
The tea towel itself is easily made from 100% cotton home dec weight fabric. I started making my own towels from home dec weight cotton last year, and now I'm hooked. See my Anthropologie-inspired Love tea towel here.
Once you wash the sizing out, the fabric becomes quite a bit softer than what it is on the bolt. And that heavy cotton is nice and absorbent for drying your hands! Give it a try – you'll be hooked, too.
I especially love the vintage style ornaments made from vintage fabrics, but really any colorful scraps of fabric will work. Or, use solids but embellish the ornaments up with buttons and ribbons and sparkly accents! One of my friends also suggested that I get a desk lamp from Antiques Boutique (for more information, see www.AntiquesBoutique.com) and adorn it with the fabric to make the space look even more festive during the holidays.
Supplies
22" x 30" home décor weight cotton fabric (1 yard will be enough to make 2 towels.)
Colorful fabric scraps. (I used vintage fabrics)
Scrap of brown, black, or gray solid cotton fabric
Fusible webbing
20" narrow ribbon or pom pom trim (optional)
Free pattern – Vintage Christmas Ornament Tea Towel
How to make a Christmas tea towel with vintage ornament appliques:
First, press in a 3/8" double fold hem around all sides of your fabric. Miter the corners for a finished look. If you don't know how to miter corners on a double fold hem, use my tutorial here.
Sew around all four sides close to the folded edge to secure your hem.
And that's all it takes to make a basic tea towel! Now let's add the vintage Christmas ornament appliques.
Now, there is no reason at all that you need to make your design look exactly like mine. In fact, I've included an extra ornament piece in the pattern that I don't use in my design at all. I had planned to use it, but it just didn't work out once I got all my pieces cut. I left it in the pattern in case you wanted to use it on your towel.
Trace the pattern pieces on to your fusible webbing.
Follow manufacturer's instructions to fuse the ornament pieces to the backs of your fabric scraps. Fuse the ornament toppers to a scrap of solid cotton.
Cut out your ornament pieces and remove the paper backing. Leave the ornament topper pieces alone for now. They're tiny and will get lost easily once you cut them out. Ask me how I know.
Arrange your ornaments on your towel. At this point you're using just the main ornament pieces, not the toppers. Just play around with the placement and go with an arrangement that makes you happy. This is the arrangement I used.
In my arrangement, the bottoms of the ornaments are 1.5", 1.75" and 3" from the bottom of the towel.
Follow manufacturer's instructions to fuse your ornament pieces down to the towel.
Top stitch around the ornaments close to the edges to secure.
NOW cut out the ornament topper pieces. Place them over the tops of the ornaments with approximately 1/8" overlap. Follow manufacturer's instructions to fuse them down, then top stitch to secure.
I didn't show the top stitching in the illustration below because the pieces are so small.
Optional: If you're feeling brave, you can stitch some hanging loops at the top of each ornament. Use an erasable pen to draw the lines first, then stitch over them with dark thread. Use a small stitch length and hand crank through those tight curves. I stitched each hanging loop twice. It creates thicker lines that stand out more, and - more importantly - two lines of stitching will even out any wonky lines.
Optional: Stitch the trim across the bottom of the towel. I used some fabric glue to keep mine in place while I stitched it down. If you do that, just make sure that the glue is dry before you sew the ribbon down.
Your Christmas ornament tea towel is done! Now you have to decide if you're going to gift it or keep it f or yourself!
