Do It Yourself Tea Towels | HTV on Flour Sack Towels | Vinyl on Flour Sack Towels

Flour sack towels are a classic addition to any home decor. They not only add style to your kitchen they are also so practical. The tea towel is a great home decor piece that will be used everyday! They are used for everything from drying our hands after doing the dishes to pulling that fresh pie out of the oven to cool. Read on to learn how I create these unique towels!

MATERIALS NEEDED

Disclaimer: The links in this blog are things that I have purchased with my own money and recommend to you. *****As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases*****

Tea Towels I used (affiliate link) -  UPDATE: Since creating these Tea Towels I have found a much better Tea Towel to use. They are slightly different then the ones in the video but they offer a more clean crisp towel with much less ironing. They are excellent quality compared to the mainstay brand and I have purchased them many times for my business. Check them out HERE.

Iron on Vinyl (affiliate link) - I love THIS KIND from amazon! I've ordered many times.

Cutting Machine (affiliate link) -I have a CRICUT EXPLORE AIR and can I just say I LOVE THIS THING! I have the Gold Edition because that was on sale when I was in the market. I'm not sure you can get that color for a decent price anymore. The colors that are a good price now are the mint, matte black, or a cherry/rose color.

Cut Files - Subscribe to THE BARNES DOOR to get the free cut files emailed to you! Just scroll to the bottom of the page and enter your email or CLICK HERE. The files will then be emailed directly to you. we send out occasional emails that include home decor tutorials and new shop products, travel hacks, DIY crafts and much more!

(I've updated the cut files slightly, the main update is the look of the whisk. The updated one is much easier to weed, I also wanted to be able to offer them for free and do to licensing with the original whisk I could not distribute it.)

Check out the VIDEO at the end of the post to see how I made these cute tea towels.

Step One: Collect Towel Designs

You can download the designs I've shared or find/create your own designs. Once you have your designs upload them to your cutting software.

Step Two: Cutting the Design

You will first want to decide how big to make the design on your towel. I like to iron my towels flat and then fold them in half then in half again (Check out the video below for a visual of this). Then I will place my design on the end of the towel. My decals were about 5x6 inches wide. Once you decide on the size go ahead and cut your designs out. Make sure the matte side of the vinyl is facing up and glossy side down. You will also need to flip the images you cut so that when you iron them onto the material they are the right direction. (In the Cricut software its called "Mirror on".)

Step Three: Weeding out the Excess Material

Once you have your designs cut you will need to weed out the material that you don't need. I have yet to buy a weed tool mainly because I'm lazy and cheap. I've been using my good old sewing pick for years and it works great!

Step Four: Placing the design & Ironing it

Start out by making sure that your towel is ironed nice and flat and folded the way you will want the design to be displayed. Set your iron to the cotton/linen setting with the steam off. You will then want to go over it for a few seconds with the iron to warm up the surface and get rid of any moisture. Then place your design on the towel with the plastic glossy side facing up. The back of the plastic has a sticky surface so it won't slip around while your ironing it.

Once your design is in place you're ready to start ironing. Now when you read the directions for the Iron-On Vinyl it says that you can iron straight on the plastic but that totally melts the plastic and you might even get debris stuck to your iron. Use a barrier of some kind to protect your iron. You can use a thin piece of fabric or another tea towel.

UPDATE: I have recently upgraded to using teflon sheets as my barrier. I love them! Not totally necessary since a thin piece of fabric works just fine. However, if you use HTV on a regular basis I would recommend it. HERE (affiliate link) are the ones I have.

Now your ready to begin ironing. Iron the design for 15 seconds. If the design is bigger than your iron, you must iron each part of the design for 15 seconds. Once you have done this you can remove the plastic. I like to iron mine twice just to make sure it's on there good so I place the fabric back over the design and iron the entire design again for another 15 seconds.

If you can see the indention of the fabric through your HTV, like in the picture below, you know that you have it ironed on long enough.

UPDATE: I have upgraded to using a heat press for my HTV projects. If you use HTV on a regular bases I would highly recommend it. It is a huge time saver since you can heat the entire design at the same time. I got a base model one from Amazon for just over $200 and it does a great job! HERE (affiliate link) is the one I got if you want to check it out. It also comes with heat press attachments for hats, mugs and plates. Which is a huge bonus! I haven't used it yet for mugs but I can't wait to try some HTV on mugs!

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Check out the Video Tutorial below! Make sure to SUBSCRIBE to my youtube channel for more!

Disclaimer: The links in this blog are things that I have purchased with my own money and recommend to you. *****As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases*****