Freezer Paper Stenciled Dish Towels

This is an easy, fun project! You’ll need some plain towels. I have had some stashed in my fabric collection for quite awhile. I bought these from Target and JoAnn Fabric for only a few dollars.

Pre-wash and dry your towels. Assemble your supplies: Freezer paper, paint, fabric paint medium (if necessary, more on that in a minute) and any ric rac trim or ruffle trim you wan! Follow my tutorial on freezer paper stenciling.

One major tip I would like to give for the freezer paper stenciling:

You don’t want to use straight-up acrylic paint for most fabric projects. It gets really stiff when it dries. I did not know this and ruined another project.

If you want to use acrylic paint, you can add a fabric paint medium to your acrylic paint. (That’s what the arrow is pointing to in the above picture.) It won’t be all stiff and weird when it dries. It’s just better.

You can buy special fabric paint, which I have used in the past. It works well, but it’s more expensive and you get less paint in the bottle. For this project, I spent a little bit of money on the fabric paint medium and was able to use various colors of paint I already had to decorate the towels. As you know, I'm all about crafting on a budget.

Anyway!

Do your freezer paper stenciling.

Let the paint dry before adding the ruffle or ric rac embellishments!

Once everything was dry, I added some ruffle or ric rac trim to my towels. For the ruffles, I just gathered a 1.5” strip of fabric and pinned it to the towel.

Then I stitched it to the towel.

Finally, remove the original gathering stitches with your trusty seam ripper.

Make sure you iron the paint 24-48 hours later to 'set' it. That way it won't run after washing.

Enjoy your new towels!

The green paint didn’t cover the pattern on the fabric well. I might re-do the stenciling in red so it will cover better.

I especially love how the bike towels turned out. Living life with a husband and two boys means I can’t decorate with flowers and bows.

But I do love the ric rac.