If you’ve been hanging out here for any amount of time, you’ve come to know that I believe that it’s the little things that make life extraordinary.

There is absolutely no need to have pretty embellished valentine towels in your powder room or bath.

Truly, we don’t need fancy towels.

What if your friend gives you a bit of fabric?

What if ivory hand towels the precise color of the fabric are discontinued and on sale for just $2.09 each?

What would you do?  Get out the scissors and sewing machine and embellish a few towels for Valentine’s Day?

Seems like a good plan to me.

The sewing machine doesn’t come out very often.  I have very little confidence in the sewing department.  It’s one of those areas where you need to practice your craft in order to be comfortable with it.

When I was in college I made everything for my dorm room.  I took down drapes that were there and made my own.  I even embellished all my pillow cases with lace and ribbons that I bought by weight.   In fact, I still have those pillow cases and use them. And if I needed a new skirt or dress, I made that too.   I even made my very simple eyelet lace wedding dress.  Nothing I made was complicated or elaborate.  But, because I sewed often, I had confidence in my skills and in my machine.

Over the years, I traded up and got a better sewing machine.  And the better the machine, the less I sewed.  I exchanged my presser foot for a big cooking canner, which I used to dye my reed.  Basket weaving became my hobby, along with wood working and gardening and bicycling and walking.  And then life just got too busy and I did very little crafting until I started this blog.

Confidence in sewing or crafting, comes with the doing.  Don’t laugh, but even sewing the buttons on this towel was a little bit of a challenge.  Trying to get the thread even without picking up the threads from the towel was tricky.

Again…I realized that as hard as I tried…it wasn’t perfect.  And it wasn’t going to be perfect.

It’s a good thing the Nester says, “It doesn’t have to be perfect to be beautiful.”  I cannot tell you how much that simple statement has done for me.  My mom used to make something and say it was “good enough.”  I used to bristle when I heard her say that as I was growing up.  She was an avid knitter, and I know that she had unraveled many a sweater when she was quite far into it when she discovered a mistake.  But, generally, “good enough” for her was good enough.   I, in turn, was working on achieving that elusive thing we call perfection.

Guess what?!  These embellished valentine towels are not perfect.

I’m not going to point out all the imperfections.  And I hope that you don’t enlarge them on your computer so that you can find the imperfections either.

Instead, I’ll tell you how I made them…sorta.

This is the first non tutorial I think I have for the blog.  You see I had an idea in my head, but pretty much just embellished as I went along and didn’t take any pictures except the beginning and the end.

The towel embellished with the ruffle and buttons is pretty straight forward.  I simply took a wide width of fabric pressed the edges under and set it aside while I took another piece of fabric and sewed it together and ruffled it.  I then attached the ruffle to the wide fabric and then sewed the whole business onto the towel.  The little extra was the addition of the buttons which came from the button box. This was the hardest part of the whole project.  That is a lot of fabric to send a needle through.  But, I did it without puncturing my finger.  Yay!

The towel with the bow was super easy.  The hardest part was cutting the fabric so that I had two lengths that matched.  I didn’t want to waste fabric doing this.  In the end it isn’t a perfect match, but you cannot tell.  To embellish this towel, I made two “sashes” and sewed them on the towel, kind of like putting strings on an apron.  The buttons forming the heart….they were the challenge of this towel.  How to arrange them into a heart-shaped pattern and sew them on?  What did I do?  I grabbed my tacky glue and placed a small dab on each button to hold it in place.  Then I put an embroidery hoop over that area to keep it the terry cloth a little taut and sewed on the buttons.

For just a little effort, and very little money, we have a pair of embellished valentine towels to dress up the powder room.   These towels would go for  a pretty penny at a boutique shoppe.

They are so pretty, I don’t want any one to use them, just in case they don’t launder well.   Actually they will probably do just fine.  But, remember how I lack confidence in my sewing skills?  Yeah.  There is that possibility that my towels won’t be perfect any more.  Yes…that is a possibility.  But, even more, what’s the point if our guests must be told the towels are just for looks?

If we are living extraordinary lives, we help our friends and guests feel comfortable using the pretty things.  In fact, we don’t hold back the best things, we use them.  Every day.  That’s being extraordinary!

If you’ve never embellished towels before, give it a try.  

Choose a fabric to match your bath, or something seasonal, or for the next holiday.  Have fun with it!  Get that dusty sewing machine off the shelf and build your sewing confidence, created some embellished valentine towels….for next Valentine’s Day!

If you’d like more Valentine’s Day ideas, please check out these posts:

Sweet Heart Hand Pies for Your Valentine

Book Page Valentine Mantel

Quick & Easy Transformation :: Christmas to Valentine’s Day

DIY Inspiration | Decorating a Vintage Window for Valentine’s Day

A Box Disguised as a Stack of Letters ~Filled with Words of Affirmation

Thank you for stopping by today.
I appreciate you and your sweet comments make my day.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Diane

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