Christmas Crafts

So the world did not end, but my computer did take a final bow. For two weeks I went without while we took it to the doctor, crossed our fingers, and got a quote. Finally, a few days ago we decided no amount of crossing fingers or bandaids were going to fix that boo boo in a reasonable fashion, and over the river and through the woods to the Apple store we went.

Now that I'm back up and running, I wanted to share one of the christmas craftsy gifts I did this year. This was a tutorial I found a very long time ago on Pinterest, and was waiting for the right timing to put it into use. You can see the tutorial here for complete instructions.

Turning Old Recipes into Tea Towels

For anyone who can run a hemline on a machine AND happens to be just a little tech-savy, this tutorial is great. I didn't really struggle with any step, except with how time-consuming it actually was to hem eight of these in one sitting. I requested my Grandmother write out one of her traditional dessert recipes on plain white notebook paper. Then, following the instructions I edited the scanned copy of the recipe and uploaded it to Spoonflower. The material was nice, and the delivery was on time - which was lucky for me since I waited until the last second to order it! I did all the cutting, hemming, and ironing in one evening.

The towels were printed four to a yard with a blue border so that the back hem was a little colorful. I also added a little lacy loop to one corner of each towel for hanging-up convenience.

To make the gift a little more substantial, I came up with a special way of "packaging" them. Each towel-recipient also received a box of yellow cake mix - the main ingredient in the recipe - and this sturdy wooden spoon. I used these initial ornament gift tags from my favorite place on earth (aka Anthropologie) and some red baker's twine to tie it all together.

Of course, these are really meant more as a decorative keepsake, but they could be useful as well. I liked that I could create something honoring my grandmother and give that gift to her and her daughters and granddaughters (my cousins and sisters). What's neat, too, is that I only chose one recipe this year. I could, over several years, create a set for everyone.