Teacher Gifts – Dipped Towels and Painted Spoons

Ask me if I got any sewing done this weekend?

Oh, just save it. No. No, I didn’t. My fabrics are all washed and ironed and stacked but the sewing didn’t happen. I blame my family. :)

Anyway, Love Bug’s first school year is coming to a close soon and, since we have a little busyness coming up this week, I wanted to finish the teacher gifts this weekend.

I wanted the gifts to be fun, original and not too hard on the pocketbook. Flour sack towel projects are popping up all over the web right now. But flour sack towels aren’t new, my very young, vibrant mom had a set with embroidered days of the week images. :) With their 100% cotton-ness, I thought the towels would work wonderfully with my Setacolor paints.

I first talked about the Setacolor fabric paints in this project with Love Bug. They are beautifully bright paints and I was excited to use them again.

For this, I diluted the paint with a little water. I did try to keep the paint rather bold so there would be enough color for the ‘dipped’ part.

Then, I folded the towel until it was narrow enough to fit in the little cup.

Then I dipped it.

The good thing about towels, they’re absorbent.

I hung the towel on the clothes line, dipped section at the top. Taking my spray bottle, I started saturating the colored part with water.

The water caused the color to seep into the not-colored part. Each towel ended up different which I liked.

After the towels dried, I heat set the color with my iron and then I washed them all to get them soft again.

Brightly colored towels.

Next up, the spoons.

And I’m not sure who first thought of adding some color to brighten up kitchen utensils but kudos to them. I found these darling itty bitty bamboo spoons on Amazon. I feel like I should have a party serving lots of little dips just to use these spoons. But alas, they are not for me.

I rolled the towels and tied everything together. All that is left is to make cards which we are working on today. I’m going to check this one off my list.

Teacher gifts, done.

Bright, fun, original and not too hard on the pocketbook. Spoons – about $5/teacher, towels – $2/teacher. $7 totally doable for me.

Have a great Monday