Home & Away: Recipes into tea towels

When I have some free time, there's really nothing I love more than working on a project at home. Get ready, you get to see more of my cat and my house. Win!

I found the idea to turn old recipes into tea towels on Pinterest. The mastermind behind this is the Emma Jeffery (she has her own blog Hello Beautiful) but she posted this idea through a guest post on Spoonflower's blog.  I've ordered fabric through Spoonflower before, and while it's a little pricey, the quality is top-notch. You basically want to take a nice picture of a favorite or meaningful recipe card and order a yard (makes 4) of linen-cotton canvas from Spoonflower. Emma's tutorial really shows you all the steps, so I'm not going to chart all of those out, but I will show you what I ended up with a few of my action shots along the way (cue the cat!).

Peanut was super excited that I was spending some time with the ironing board and sewing machine. This means that she has more things to jump on and interact with. She's such a good sewing assistant! She headed right for her cat cottage (make your own cat cottage) to oversee the process.

I knew right away what recipe I was going to use. My grandma has some real treasures in the bar department (Minnesota is famous for their bars). A family favorite were her O'Henry bars. My mom continues to make these as a special treat. The brilliant thing about the tea towels is that you can also use the towel to follow the recipe, and it's in my grandma's own handwriting, which makes it extra super special to have.

The process is pretty straight forward, and again, it's detailed in Emma's post. You cut, iron, and hem x4. I went ahead and added a little tea towel loop so the towel would easily hang in my kitchen.

Before I knew it, I had all my chickens in a row.

I gifted one of these to both sisters and one for my mom. I wanted my mom to open her's before anyone else because it was a surprise to everyone. I knew that she would like it...

What I didn't know was that it would make my mom cry a bunch. I guess I thought she might tear up, but there were some serious "it's just so special" tears. When I think about it, it is kind of special, and I think my grandma would think that it was special too, and neat! You should make your mom cry (happy tears!) and make some sentimental tea towels for Mother's Day or her birthday!

You can see a few more pictures of this year's Second Christmas here.