Is it too early to be talking about the holidays? Actually, yes, it is. But us hand-maker-y types need to get an early start on presents! The best part of the holiday season (Mid-November through January 1st here, but your location may vary) is seeing family, but the second best is going to lots of holiday parties, from friendsgiving potlucks to glitzy New Year\’s Eve bashes. My usual go-to hostess gift is a bottle of wine but it\’s also nice to add a little handmade touch to your gifting, especially when people know you made your dress and want to get in on the action a little bit. Enter the perfect combination: hand-hemmed Spoonflower tea towel + literally whatever. I have had mixed results with Spoonflower fabric (I love their sport lycra but wasn\’t pleased with their cotton sateen, although that was also years and years ago) but I really love browsing the very large (64 pages) collection of tea towel designs. They are all designed to fit on a fat quarter of the linen/cotton canvas so 1 towel is $14, about the same as you\’d pay at anthropologie. (They occasionally have 2 for 1 fat quarter sales, so I have learned to stock up then!)
Once your towels arrive, you just wash and hem them–easiest \”handmade\” present ever. (I suggest serging/zig-zagging the edges, then washing them, then finishing the hemming, since I threw 12 towels in the laundry unhemmed and ended up with a huge damp clump of towels tangled together on the frayed edges!) Then get something to wrap it around–a handmade tea towel will elevate even a grocery store bottle of wine but you could pair a potted kitchen herb with a thematic towel (this one\’s cute) or even wrap up a box of pasta and a fancy jar of sauce for a house-warming party. My favorite combination is towel and candle–this might be weird but I love lighting a candle in a clean, kitchen-y scent (lemon in the summer, pine in the winter) when I have to do the dishes or scrub the counters. The one I have in my kitchen now is the Lemon Lavender scent from Diamond Elm Candles (c/o) on etsy–it\’s handmade, 100% soy and a much nicer scent than my old lemon lavender candle from the mall! The wood wicks in their candles make a cozy crackling sound and I think one of their fall scents would be perfect for a Thanksgiving hostess gift. They smell nice, look cute wrapped in a useful and unique handmade towel, and last longer than the wine you were planning on bringing!
Do you make your holiday gifts or buy them? I generally don\’t do handmade gifts, but these are so easy that even I, lazy, selfish seamstress that I am, can whip up a few by the time November rolls around…
xoxo,