While looking through my set of kitchen towels, I noticed that some of them really needed to be replaced. They get a lot of use in my kitchen. I mostly use them to dry my hands after hand washing while cooking. The reason for the explanation is that these kinds of towels are usually called dish towels/cloths. I sometimes use them to dry dishes, and if so I’ll just grab a fresh one. However, I don’t use them as often for drying dishes as I do for drying my hands.
The last kitchen towel that I made lasted 10 years. That’s a long time in my kitchen! It totally outlasted the store bought woven ones, which tend to get dingy and worn over time. I mended it earlier this year, and it was usable again for awhile. A few months later it started to fray in other places and couldn’t be mended anymore. Since it’s 100% cotton, I cut it up and threw it into the compost, where it’ll break back down into the soil that it once grew from.
For these new towels, I once again used cotton. I had some in my stash, but what I had were dark colors. I needed more yardage and some new colors to brighten things up. I headed to Michael’s to see what they had, and discovered a new yarn brand: Loops & Threads. It’s a brand which is exclusive to Michael’s stores. They had a kitchen cotton version with a nice selection of colors, at a reasonable price: $2.50 for 95 yds (86.8 m). I bought 5 skeins: 2 in a patterned colorway, and 3 different neon brights.
For the first towel (pictured on the right) I combined the cotton from my stash with the newly bought cotton. I used a size G hook for that one:
For the second towel, I used the patterned colorway, which was a nice break from changing row colors. It came out shorter than the first because I ran out of yarn, but it’ll work fine:
By the time I started the third towel, I’d really hit my stride and wanted to do something fancy. I looked up some crochet stitches for dish towels and found one called the Griddle, or Lemon Peel stitch. That’s the stitch I used here. I also went back to different color rows, this time more rows than the first!:
Whenever there’s a stitch pattern beyond using just 1 basic stitch over a large area, there’s the potential for errors. I did have to re-do a row more than once on this one. The work also goes a bit slower, due to the stitch variation and the need for more attention to the work. I do like how that one came out though! The texture and visual effect is really dramatic compared to basic crochet.
If you’d like to give making your own hand towels a try, here’s the stitch pattern:
Griddle/Lemon Peel Stitch:
Chain an odd number of stitches.
Row 1: DC into the the second chain from the end, then
SC, DC to the end of the row, ending on a SC.
At the beginning of each new row, CH 1 before working the row.
And that’s it! Points to remember:
- Every row begins on a DC
- Every row ends on a SC
And while I didn’t get these done in time for Thanksgiving, they’re done and ready for kitchen duty over the Christmas holiday..
Until my next post, thanks for reading 🙂
Sewcoordinated 