hand-embroidery project: "miller" kitchen towel

I just finished and hung a fresh linen towel on the oven! I'm proud of how it turned out - a little embroidery, a little fabric print, and I have a new pre-spring towel to look at every day. It matches our kitchen perfectly.



It was really a super simple project. The linen towel is a blank from the store at my work, and the fabric is just a strip of quilters cotton that I've had in my stash for awhile. I used some rust-red embroidery floss and sewing thread to match the rust-red out of the fabric print. The embroidery design itself was super easy - I just typed up "miller" on the computer, found a font I liked, set it to an outline stroke, printed it out and traced the design on with water-soluble pen. I finished the backstitching with 3 strands of DMC floss in less than a couple hours in front of the TV.



To finish up embellishing with the fabric, I just gave myself about a quarter-inch seam allowance, steamed the folds into the fabric, pinned and straight stitched in the rust-red thread. It's not 100% perfect, but oh well - I like it anyway! I love having a cute towel hanging there to see every time I walk into the kitchen. Now, I'm thinking about making one for Nathan's rock-n-roll bathroom with these patterns from Sublime Stitching...I think he would like it, and it's probably the only way I'm going to get some hand embroidery into the man bathroom.