Cross-Stitched Baby Towels

               I used to be at the age where everyone was getting married; I’m now at the age where everyone is having babies.  Not having a child myself, I find the whole diaper/nursing/bottle scene a little overwhelming.  I have no idea what a kid really needs.  Luckily, I do understand that most babies require a towel after being washed.  For this reason, I’ve mostly stuck to buying hooded towels for all my friends.

                A few years ago, Pottery Barn changed the material in their critter towels for the worse.  They used to offer a chick (pink!), a cow (blue!) or a pig (green!) in their collection.  The material was soft and absorbent.  I got rave reviews from my new-parent friends, especially if they also had a cheaper towel from Target or Babies R Us in their closets for comparison.  But when Pottery Barn introduced their new critters (frogs, elephants, bunnies, other unidentifiable creatures), the quality nose-dived.  I was actually rather upset because I loved giving the towels and the thought of finding a new go-to gift was daunting.

                I have since found that their gingham hooded towels are reasonable.  Still not the quality I come to expect from Pottery Barn, but passable.  The added bonus of these towels is that you can have the child’s name stitched on the hood.  Unfortunately, the cost Pottery Barn demands for such a service is ridiculous.  It is most certainly cheaper and easier to do it yourself!

                Here are two samples of towels I’ve given as gifts recently (NOTE: the names are not real – they are nicknames or inside jokes between me, the parents, and their friends.  Please don’t think my friends don’t know how to name their children).  Given the number of friends I have in their childbearing years, I expect my practice time to increase and my designs to become more involved.  

                What do you need to do this?

The ability to cross stitch.  If you don’t know how, don’t be too frightened to try!  It’s really quite simple.  Here’s a short tutorial (link).  I personally don’t make the elegant knots that professional cross-stitchers do .  My mom taught me how to loop the thread to start and knot it at the end in a functional, if not perfect, way.  No one sees the back – don’t get too caught up in the details.  As long as the pattern looks correct on the front, I consider it good work.  (Perhaps a tip worthy of flames from hardened crafters, but I’d hate to see someone give up because their knots aren’t perfect, you know?)

Thread.  True story – it took me three orders from JoAnn Fabrics to get the right thread for cross stitching.  My mother taught me how to cross stitch at a young age and yet, even knowing exactly what I wanted, I still couldn’t order correctly.  In my defense, though, JoAnn’s website has two insanely similar items for sale and if you don’t read carefully, you will order the wrong thing.  Twice.  

You will need FLOSS (link).  I ordered a multi-pack of colors.

Waste Canvas.  Cross-stitch is done on threaded canvas, which is fine if you want to incorporate that material into your project.  For the towels, I wanted to stitch directly on the fabric but needed a cross-stitch guide.  Waste canvas was made for this (link)!

Patterns.  A quick trip to Barnes and Noble’s magazine section lead me to several cross stitch magazines full of patterns (link, link).  They have pictures, alphabets, full projects and so much more.  All are color coded but you are free to improvise however you see fit.  Don’t see anything you like?  Design your own pattern!

Other miscellaneous items: needles, pins, graph paper, good lighting, tweezers, water

                Once you have all your materials, you need to pick a pattern.  I’ll explain the green towel since it was very straightforward.  I found an alphabet style I liked in a cross-stitch magazine.  On the graph paper, I wrote out the word “Spartacus” in the letter style by x-ing where each stitch should go.  I made sure two squares were placed in between each letter so it was spaced evenly.  I then counted how many squares I needed from start to finish, cut the waste canvas slightly larger than necessary, and pinned it to the center of the towel’s hood.  I carefully marked where the stitches would begin and where they would end with pencil.

                From here, I followed my pattern with stitches of green thread.  It is not more complicated than that!

                When you’ve finished stitching, the fun part begins!  You now have stitches holding onto the waste canvas and the towel material.  You want to remove the waste canvas and leave the stitches on the towel.

                Take the towel to the sink and wet the entire stitched area with plenty of water.  The waste canvas is quite stiff when dry but, upon wetting, will become very pliable.  

                Start with the shorter strands.  Place your tweezers at the end of one strand.  Pull straight so that one piece of waste canvas is pulled through the stitches and out.  This is just like pulling a tablecloth out from under dishes on a table.  Pull with authority but straight so you don’t disrupt your stitches.  It is easier to start with the shorter waste canvas strands and work right to left until you’ve pulled each one.  Now begin with the strands running in the perpendicular direction.

                Once they are all pulled out, you are left with your design!