This time when I went looking for kitchen towels, I decided to get myself something ‘different’. That’s easier said than done. Everywhere I looked, including online, I found kitchen towels in checks or stripes. You can picture them, can’t you? White cotton cloth with checks in red / blue / green / black? I’m sure all of us have pretty much the same set at home. But this time I really wanted different. That’s how these DIY kitchen towels came about. I didn’t find anything different, so I made it!

How To Make Pretty DIY Kitchen Towels With Stencils

The only towels I could find were checks or stripes. My existing towels are white, with coloured checks on them. So this time I picked coloured towels with white stripes on them. Then it was just these easy steps to personalise them and make them my own.

(1) Wash and Iron Them:

You need to wash the towels first to remove all the starch and have clean fabric so that the paint takes to it well. Once dry, I ironed them out to remove all the creases and have a flat surface to paint on.

(2) Make a Stencil:

I decided to use a stencil to paint the towels so that I could easily make the same design on all the towels. So the first step was to make the stencil. I folded a piece of paper in half and started drawing curved lines from the fold outwards. I thought the curved lines would look nice against the straight lines of the stripes. Also, I kept the thickness of the curved lines similar to the thickness of the straight lines already on the kitchen towels.

If you’re not sure about drawing your own stencil, you can search for ready stencils online and simply print out one you like. If you like the one I’ve done above, send us your email id in the slot at the beginning or the end of this post, and we will email this design to you.

Then cut carefully along the lines to cut out your stencil. It helps to use a smaller scissor if the lines are fine.

I opened out my stencil and was quite happy with it.

(3) Paint Your Design Using The Stencil:

I used Fevicryl Acrylic Colours to paint these towels. Decide where you want to paint your design and place the stencil carefully. I placed the bottom end of the paper along the bottom end of the napkin to ensure the design was straight. I placed the fold of the paper along the centre fold line of the napkin to ensure the design was in the centre.

Paint the design by dabbing the brush over the stencil. Don’t use brush strokes. The paper moves easily with the strokes of the brush and the paint gets under the edges. Dabbing the brush keeps the paper in place and ensures the paint stays only within the cutout area.

Once you are done, lift the paper carefully making sure the paint does not smudge.

(4) A Border To Finish It Off:

The kitchen towel looked simple and beautiful.

But I thought the towel looked a little incomplete as is. I thought a border at the bottom edge would ground the design properly. So I added one thick horizontal line at the bottom.

And then a thinner line above that to complete it.

Use Your DIY Kitchen Towels In So Many Ways:

The stencilied DIY kitchen towels look pretty cool I think… and definitely ‘different’!

You can also use this same technique to personalise napkins for dinner…

… or tea.

Or use them as hand towels in your washroom.

Stenciling is actually a super easy way to personalise all your linen… what are you going to begin with?

Until next time,

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