As it’s the season for giving, and baking and gift-giving alike, why not combine these activities? So I thought it was high time I gathered up some of our family’s classic recipes into keepsake tea towels as keepsakes of this holiday.
Every Thanksgiving we enjoy making Grandma Carole’s key lime pie (in addition to pumpkin), and Aunt Emily’s dolma recipe is consistently requested at Matt’s side of the family gatherings.
I typed two recipes onto templates I designed and uploaded them to Spoonflower for printing. Once my fabric arrived, I stitched them into keepsake tea towels as gifts for friends.
Spoonflower published an article years ago detailing this project – it’s such a brilliant idea! I added text to.jpg templates I created using Gimp or Canva for these versions, though you could also handwrite your recipes onto photocopies of handwritten ones (also charming!). Check out more ways this can be accomplished here.
As I did not have access to handwritten recipes, I wanted to find creative solutions using photos and illustrations instead. To create my key lime pie recipe, I turned to Canva where royalty-free illustrations, graphics, photos, and layouts are readily available for creative projects. For my recipe of key lime pie I used this lime and leaves image, while with Photoshop I deleted some elements to create space for text in my recipe card. A watercolor lemon image can also be useful if your dish involves lemons!
To recreate this project, a.jpg file measuring 18×27″, which corresponds to the size and thickness of a fat quarter fabric on Spoonflower; its texture and thickness work particularly well as tea towel fabric.
18×27″ is considered a fat quarter size; however, selecting a full yard will yield four tea towels in this size.
Spoonflower makes uploading and printing simple! Simply set up an account, upload your design (for this project ideally 18×27″ with 150 dots per inch resolution and a 1 1/2-inch border for seam allowance works best) and print. I have provided some templates below as free tools to assist you!
