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DIY Bakery Tea Towels

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Make your own beautiful bakery tea towels to help around the kitchen with this easy DIY stencil tutorial.

For some reason I can go through my entire drawer of kitchen towels in a couple days. I must be the messiest cook in America (at least that’s what my husband thinks). But I always clean up after myself hence the reason I dirty so many towels.

So to ensure I have enough towels to get me through a week, I made these DIY bakery tea towels to share with you today!

I want to make a bunch of these tea towels for gifts! These easy to make DIY bakery tea towels are a great way to add vintage charm to your kitchen or to give as gifts. Learn how to make a plastic stencil with your Silhouette to paint on inexpensive store bought flour sack towels. | Housefulofhandmade.com

You guys know how much I love my Silhouette. It has seriously changed the way I create. I have loads of projects using an electronic cutting machine.

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I use it to craft everything from stencils to home decor, paper crafts to photo mats, and everything in between.

I want to make a bunch of these tea towels for gifts! These easy to make DIY bakery tea towels are a great way to add vintage charm to your kitchen or to give as gifts. Learn how to make a plastic stencil with your Silhouette to paint on inexpensive store bought flour sack towels. | Housefulofhandmade.com

Typically when I create a stencil for painting, I use vinyl, but when you want to make more than one item, you would have to use a lot of vinyl.

I didn’t want to waste all that vinyl or go through the work of making 4 stencils for my 4 tea towels.

So instead I made a different kind of stencil, a plastic one that could be reused over and over and over.

 I want to make a bunch of these tea towels for gifts! These easy to make DIY bakery tea towels are a great way to add vintage charm to your kitchen or to give as gifts. Learn how to make a plastic stencil with your Silhouette to paint on inexpensive store bought flour sack towels. | Housefulofhandmade.com

Using your Silhouette to cut different materials can be scary, the last thing you want to do is to break it. But I have learned that I will never realize all the amazing things it can cut if I don’t put it to the test.

So I experiment with all kinds of things. And after cutting out index dividers for binders for these giant outdoor pinwheels, I knew I could use the same binder dividers to make a stencil.

It worked out better than I could have imagined!

I want to make a bunch of these tea towels for gifts! These easy to make DIY bakery tea towels are a great way to add vintage charm to your kitchen or to give as gifts. Learn how to make a plastic stencil with your Silhouette to paint on inexpensive store bought flour sack towels. | Housefulofhandmade.com

Now I am ready to buy up all the plastic binder dividers so I can make stencils for days!

And if you love tea towels as much as I do, you are going to want to check out these DIY tea towels too. They are so pretty and super easy to make.

How to Make DIY Bakery Tea Towels

Supplies:

Before painting fabric, it needs to be washed and dried to remove any residue and allow any shrinking that might happen. Then iron if needed.

EXPERT TIP: Make sure to wash and dry towels without fabric softeners or dryer sheets. These could add a residue to the fabric making it harder for the paint to adhere.

Open the bakery cut file in the Silhouette software. Size the stencil to fit your towels. My towels were approximately 30″x30″ so I made the stencil 1/3 of the size of the towels.

Set the cut settings for cutting chipboard. I typically set the blade to be one number deeper than the default to ensure a clean cut on the binder divider.

Place the binder divider on your cutting mat and cut.

I want to make a bunch of these tea towels for gifts! These easy to make DIY bakery tea towels are a great way to add vintage charm to your kitchen or to give as gifts. Learn how to make a plastic stencil with your Silhouette to paint on inexpensive store bought flour sack towels. | Housefulofhandmade.com

Carefully remove the stencil from the cutting mat. My mat was brand new so it was super sticky and I didn’t want the stencil to stretch so I had to be extra careful.

Now you have a reusable plastic stencil.

I want to make a bunch of these tea towels for gifts! These easy to make DIY bakery tea towels are a great way to add vintage charm to your kitchen or to give as gifts. Learn how to make a plastic stencil with your Silhouette to paint on inexpensive store bought flour sack towels. | Housefulofhandmade.com

Position your stencil over your tea towel where you want the design. Secure the stencil with some washi tape or masking tape so it doesn’t move.

I want to make a bunch of these tea towels for gifts! These easy to make DIY bakery tea towels are a great way to add vintage charm to your kitchen or to give as gifts. Learn how to make a plastic stencil with your Silhouette to paint on inexpensive store bought flour sack towels. | Housefulofhandmade.com

Now it’s time for paint. Use a foam paint pouncer to stipple the fabric paint onto the stencil.

Be careful to only paint in an up-down motion, not side-to-side to get clean paint lines. I wanted a vintage look so I didn’t make my paint perfectly even.

I want to make a bunch of these tea towels for gifts! These easy to make DIY bakery tea towels are a great way to add vintage charm to your kitchen or to give as gifts. Learn how to make a plastic stencil with your Silhouette to paint on inexpensive store bought flour sack towels. | Housefulofhandmade.com

Once the paint is how you want it. Carefully remove the stencil by lifting it straight up so you don’t smear any paint.

I want to make a bunch of these tea towels for gifts! These easy to make DIY bakery tea towels are a great way to add vintage charm to your kitchen or to give as gifts. Learn how to make a plastic stencil with your Silhouette to paint on inexpensive store bought flour sack towels. | Housefulofhandmade.com

Let the paint dry, then iron it with a hot iron to set the paint into the fabric.

I want to make a bunch of these tea towels for gifts! These easy to make DIY bakery tea towels are a great way to add vintage charm to your kitchen or to give as gifts. Learn how to make a plastic stencil with your Silhouette to paint on inexpensive store bought flour sack towels. | Housefulofhandmade.com

Now you can enjoy your new DIY bakery tea towels. I can’t wait to use them to clean up all the crazy messes in my kitchen.

I want to make a bunch of these tea towels for gifts! These easy to make DIY bakery tea towels are a great way to add vintage charm to your kitchen or to give as gifts. Learn how to make a plastic stencil with your Silhouette to paint on inexpensive store bought flour sack towels. | Housefulofhandmade.com

And how cute would these be for a gift, maybe for a teacher, or gasp, Christmas (it’s not too soon is it)!

You could pair a tea towel or two with a fresh baked goodie, baking mix, or some kitchen utensils. Homemade gifts make me so happy!

I want to make a bunch of these tea towels for gifts! These easy to make DIY bakery tea towels are a great way to add vintage charm to your kitchen or to give as gifts. Learn how to make a plastic stencil with your Silhouette to paint on inexpensive store bought flour sack towels. | Housefulofhandmade.com

And don’t forget to subscribe to the newsletter for lots of craft tutorials and to gain access to the library of free downloads & printables where you can download the stencil cut file and so much more!

Now I’m off to create something else!

I want to make a bunch of these tea towels for gifts! These easy to make DIY bakery tea towels are a great way to add vintage charm to your kitchen or to give as gifts. Learn how to make a plastic stencil with your Silhouette to paint on inexpensive store bought flour sack towels. | Housefulofhandmade.com

Share the fun!

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Jeanie Puckett

Monday 31st of October 2016

L O V E these towels. I'm gonna make some for my brother who is a baker. I'm having trouble finding good stencil fonts. May I ask which fonts you used for this project? Thanks

Kati

Tuesday 1st of November 2016

Thanks Jeanie. I actually didn't use a stencil font, but carefully cut out parts of the letters to make them into a stencil font. It took a little time but made it so I didn't have to settle for a font I didn't really like.

Tiffany @ Arrows + awe

Thursday 15th of September 2016

oh. my. goodness. I am so happy I saw this post!! I have been taking my weekly trips to Michaels and literally staring at this printer int he aisle. People might think I'm crazy. I keep wondering what i can do with it and WHAT WHAT you just opened my mind! Stopping by from Awe-inspired Pinterest board!

Kati

Sunday 18th of September 2016

I'm so glad you found some inspiration! Thanks for stopping by.

Heidi

Monday 12th of September 2016

Thank you so much for this tutorial! I was wondering about cutting a stencil using my Silhouette and you've answered my questions. Such cute towels too!

Kati

Sunday 18th of September 2016

Thanks Heidi! I love cutting stencils on my Silhouette. I hope you have fun making lots of them.

Morena

Friday 9th of September 2016

Beautiful! What a great idea.

Kati

Monday 12th of September 2016

Thank you Morena!

Rachel Teodoro

Thursday 8th of September 2016

What a great idea! I have never used a binder page before to make stencil but that's genius!

Kati

Monday 12th of September 2016

Thanks Rachel! I love using the plastic binder pages to make stencils. Great for budget stencils :)

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