Do you have one recipe that’s been passed down from generation to generation or a new one you’d like to dazzle your family with this holiday? Put a creative twist on sharing your family’s special recipes by gifting the instructions for your favorite dishes on a recipe tea towel. Order one yard of Linen Cotton Canvas to make four towels to ship out to the whole family or let us do the work and sew them for you.
Join Macharva (you may know her as Mac of @macsmakespace) and her fun-loving children, Lucas and Harper, to see how they are sharing one of their favorite recipes with their family this holiday.
Macharva: When I think of the holidays, I think of spending time preparing and enjoying meals with the people I love. In fact, there isn’t a Thanksgiving or Christmas season I can remember that my husband and I haven’t spent with one or both of our moms.
Unfortunately, due to COVID-19, we’ve spent the last few holidays socially distant. To bridge the physical distance, we have been searching for a more meaningful gift idea. When we learned about the recipe tea towels at Spoonflower, we knew we had found our answer!
To create our favorite No-Knead Sprouted Wheat Bread recipe tea towel, I scanned my written recipe into Photoshop to format it (find the full tutorial here) and then uploaded my file to Spoonflower to print onto fabric or sewn tea towels. The tea towels are made from a wonderful blend of cotton and linen, and wash and iron beautifully. The recipe shows up well on the fabric and makes it so simple to follow the recipe since I don’t have to worry about ruining a paper copy. What can I say—cooking with kids is messy business!
Spoonflower Tea Towel Options
After my custom order arrived, all I needed to do was cut and hem the tea towels before sending to our moms.
For us, food is love. It transcends all boundaries and brings people together. While the recipes on my mother and mother-in-law’s sides vary, it is wonderful to see that all blend together during this special time of year. And now, with our own recipe to add to the mix, I am envisioning the bread becoming a part of breakfast as toast, lunch as bruschetta and dinner as stuffing or croutons!
Learning to bake bread has been a very symbolic action this year. It has been a way to simplify what we eat and what we need to keep in our pantry—without having to sacrifice flavor and options. It has been a labor of love that we hope to share with our two moms.
This year may be the first that families are reconnecting since the pandemic. For those celebrating remotely, these tea towels will make the holidays just as special. I can already see my two moms referencing the recipe tea towels in their respective kitchens, as I am with my children. It warms my heart to think that we will have that shared experience in spite of the distance.
Family recipe tea towels are such a thoughtful, unique gift, it is no wonder they are one of our most popular DIY projects! Whether you scan your treasured recipe card or create something completely new in your favorite design program, the possibilities to customize are endless!
You can continue being inspired by checking out how 8 Spoonflower employees customized theirs. Prefer to discover some new family food traditions? Mac’s Sprouted Wheat Bread recipe is available here or browse our Marketplace to discover dishes that will test your culinary skills this holiday.
Macharva (Mac) Housley is a DIY fashion and lifestyle content creator. Mac uses her Instagram platform, @macsmakespace, to make social media more social, by creating content that is relatable and inspiring at the same time. Macharva is also the co-founder for Sew Altered Style, a women’s sewing pattern company and DIY fashion blog. During the day, she is a higher ed administrator for a private university.
Macharva lives in the DC Metropolitan Area with her husband and two rambunctious yet adorable children. She holds a BA in Organizational Behavior & Communication from New York University and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Absolutely love this idea. We have a recipe card in our family that was my grandmother’s that everyone wants! I am getting it from my mom now so that I can create tea towels for each of us! Problem solved!!! Very excited.
How fantastic, Lily! (And I love the relief that comes with a problem solved. Phew!)
If you take photos, be sure to share them on social and tag @spoonflower so our team can see them too. 🙂
Best,
Betsy
Spoonflower
I would love to make these. I don’t have Adobe Photoshop any suggestions?
I’ve scanned the recipe I want to print but without Adobe Photoshop am I out of luck?
Hello and thank you for your interest! You can use any design program to create this. Gimp and Canva are two that are free to use online. Check out this post to see other tea towels that Spoonflower employees made. Jennifer used Canva!
It’s time now after the COVID restrictions to share our tea towels! Lovely idea! makes any kitchen, breakfast, lanch, dinner so cozy and frendly. Plus a great subject for conversation.
Do you print photos on fabric
If so how much
Thank you
Debra
Hi Debra,
This is definitely something you can create here at Spoonflower! All you need is your photo in digital form. If it’s on paper, you’ll need to scan it at the highest resolution possible. Convert your files to JPG or PNG, save your sizing at 150 dpi, and be sure to keep it under 40 MB before uploading.
Here are some helpful articles:
1. https://blog.spoonflower.com/2020/02/how-to-print-your-photos-on-fabric/
2. https://blog.spoonflower.com/2015/11/cheater-quilt-lesson-one/
3. https://blog.spoonflower.com/2015/10/make-a-pillow-from-your-favorite-photos/
Once you have your design prepared, you may then upload it to our site, here: https://www.spoonflower.com/designs/new Then you are free to have the design printed on to any of the products in our inventory. For more information about any of the products we print on, including their width sizes and pricing, go to: https://www.spoonflower.com/spoonflower_fabrics
I hope this helps, but please let us know if you have any additional questions.
Take care,
Amy
Spoonflower
How much would 10 towels cost with you doing all the work?
Hi Donnie,
Thanks for your interest! Our hand-sewn tea towels are $19 and are printed and sewn just for you in the US. If you upload and print your own design you will receive the 10% designer discount. I hope that helps, but please let me know if you have any further questions.
Take care,
Amy
Spoonflower
Hi Amy,
I see the yardage price of the material I’m interested in, but is there an additional charge for the printing? My plan is to sew the towels myself.
Thank you!
Cindy, The price of the fabric includes printing!
Best,
Amy
Spoonflower
So how much to do enough material to do 10 recipe towel?
Hi Cindy,
To make 10 Linen Cotton Canvas tea towels we recommend ordering three yards of fabric which would yield four 27″ x 18″ designs per yard. I hope that helps, but if you have any more questions don’t hesitate to ask!
I hope that helps, but if you have any more questions don’t hesitate to ask!
Best regards,
-Meredith F.