Nightmare Tea Towel

Hey ghouls and creeps! This is a project I’ve been wanting to tackle for a while now, and decided that this would be the week! One factor that I adore about the fabric dyeing process is it’s very experimental. You really don’t know what it’s going to look like until after it’s dry! I tried out three different dye resist techniques which I will outline for you, so you will have the option of trying one, two, or all three! Let’s get started!

I rated the Nightmare Tea Towel Project as easy! This project involves the following skills and techniques: potential sewing, fabric painting, and fabric dyeing.

*If you purchased pre-made tea towels, you can skip ahead to step 2!

Step 1: Tea Towel Assembly: Cut your Kona cotton into a 20″X30″ rectangle.

Press your rectangle to remove wrinkles, and begin pressing the edges for hemming. To do this press each edge over a 1/2″ toward the back of your tea towel.

Once all edges are pressed a 1/2″, fold the edges again another 1/2″ concealing the raw edges.

Unfold the second fold of two sides that meet at a corner. Mark an inch in from the corner on both sides. Connect these marks with a diagonal line where the mark meets the edge.

Fold the corner in half, keeping the first folds of each side folded. Sew along the marked line. I used purple thread because of the fiber content being polyester. With the dye type I’m using I didn’t think that the dye would recolor the thread, so I matched my thread to my dye! Trim away the excess material near the stitch line.

Flip the corner right side out, and poke the corner out completely with a blunt tool. Repeat these steps for the other three corners.

Using a ruler or seam gauge measure to verify that your folds on all sides measure a 1/2″, and pin in place.

On my throat plate, or the plate under the presser foot, I marked with a tape edge a distance between 3/8″ and 1/2″ for my seam width. The tape edge will help make sure that your stitch line is evenly spaced from the edge all the way around your tea towel. The seam width will also ensure that all layers of your towel’s hem are caught in the stitch line. Sew all the way around your tea towel, backstitching at the beginning and end of your stitching.

Step 2: Resist Dye Techniques: I wanted to test out three different dye resist techniques that I’ve seen online and in some cases, experimented with back in my BFA days! One technique involves applying glue to the surface of your material to act as a resist. The second is using basting stitches to gather your material together into dye resisting rings. The third technique is folding your towel uniformly and then clipping with clothespins. I provided instructions for all three techniques, but you only need to select your favorite! I ultimately chose the stitch resist technique.

Glue Resist: Lay your tea towel right side up, on top of sheets of wax paper. With Aleene’s Clear Tacky Glue in hand, freehand your design on your towel. Allow the glue to dry completely overnight.

Before cracking into the dyes, make sure to put on some rubber gloves! I mixed my dyes in separate bowls, and then sucked dye into my application bottles from the bowl. If you have syringes, pipets, or even a funnel, this dye transfer process would have been much easier! Pro-tip: Add salt to your dye, this will act as a dye fixative.

Place your towel on a drop cloth and apply your dyes. I would recommend applying a little more dye to your towel than less because a lot of the dye will rinse out!

Allow your towel to sit for an hour minimum, and then rinse away the extra dye with cold water. Wash your tea towel in the washer with cold water. This should remove the glue! Allow your towel to dry, and then heat set with an iron. Be sure to wash your towel separately for the first couple of washings.

Stitch Resist: With a disappearing ink marker(or pencil), draw circles at random on the back of your tea towel.

Use these circles as a guide to either hand or machine baste perfect circles! Backstitch only at one end of the stitch line, leave thread tails at the other end to be able to pull to gather.

After basting around all your circles, gently but firmly pull your thread tails to gather your stitches. Once gathered, take a hand sewing needle and pull one thread tail to the other side of the material with the other thread tail. Knot your thread ends so that the gathering stays in place.

Place your towel on a drop cloth and apply your dyes. I would recommend applying a little more dye to your towel than less because a lot of the dye will rinse out!

Allow your towel to sit for an hour minimum, and then rinse away the extra dye with cold water. Allow your towel to dry, and then heat set with an iron. Be sure to wash your towel separately for the first couple of washings.

Clamp Resist: Fold your tea towel in half lengthwise. Then fold the length of the tea towel again by folding the center to meet the ends.

Fold the width of the tea towel into thirds. Folding the towel in this way should produce a square. If it doesn’t, no problem, just tweak some of the folds until you got it!

Fold your square diagonally to form a triangle. Then clamp your clothespins around the triangle’s perimeter.

Place your towel on a drop cloth and apply your dyes. I would recommend applying a little more dye to your towel than less because a lot of the dye will rinse out! Also, be sure to flip your triangle and apply dye to the back! With all the layers, it’s not likely the dye is making it all the way through!

Step 3: Paint Halloween Town: *Important Note: I decided to change up the series of processes to have this step occur after fabric dyeing. I painted mine before and found that some of the paint migrated when dyeing. Print out the PDF file below. Match up your pages at the center and tape.

nightmare-tea-towel Download

Tape together two pieces of tracing paper and lay them on top of your print. Trace the outline of Halloween Town.

Apply graphite to the backside of your tracing paper behind your Halloween Town tracing.

Center your tracing paper tracing with the bottom of your tea towel. I positioned my tracing four inches from the bottom hem. I then retracted the graphite of a mechanical pencil and used the tip to trace my outline.

Using a medium-sized brush, I laid in the basic shapes of my buildings and the horizon line. With a fine-tipped brush, I then went back and painted details.

For the area below the horizon to the tea towel edge, I used a foam brush to paint this section. Take your white fabric paint and paint around Halloween Town with a fine-tipped brush. Fill in larger areas and paint in the background with a medium-sized brush. Set painting aside, allow to dry following the manufacturer’s instructions.

Congrats you’re finished! After washing your towel, hang it up in your kitchen and adore your hard work! You deserve it!

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Ready for your next project? Here are some tutorials on the blog I think you’ll like! Frame Flip tutorial: https://britnijade.com/frame-flip/, Macrame Wall Hanging: https://britnijade.com/macrame-wall-hanging-w-bones/, or the Spider Web Macrame: https://britnijade.com/spider-web-macrame/. Enjoy!