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By Danika Herrick on March 8, 2024
By Courtney Napier on February 12, 2024
With Laurie from the Spoonflower Email Team
Since our tea towel recipe tutorial is one of the blog’s most beloved posts, we started wondering, what other Spoonflower products could showcase and celebrate our family recipes? How else could we bring memories (often kept stowed away for safekeeping) into our homes for everyday use?
I recently inherited a family recipe book, and given my background in design and interest in genealogy, thought I’d take this project on!
Read on to learn how I turned century-old family recipes and photos into a table runner, wall hanging, tea towel and cocktail napkins—all of which were reprinted and shared with family members!
This 100-year-old recipe book belonged to my great-grandma Beatrice—my grandmother’s mother. Beatrice was a confectioner’s apprentice in her teens at school in the early 1920s, then later employed as a confectioner at the Ainsworth Arms Hotel in her hometown of Bolton, England.
If you look closely, many of the book’s recipes call for bulk ingredients—evidence that supports a young apprentice or paid professional bustling around the kitchens of a popular public house full of hungry patrons.
The book has a few pages with residue of batter or some other ingredient which is part of the special nature of a well-used cookbook. I also love my great-grandma’s handwriting—if you look closely, you can see that she was using a fountain pen.
The earliest photo we have of Beatrice is from her childhood, which I’ve included on the design of my wall hanging. The next photo is from her wedding to my great-grandfather Harold Ashworth in 1924.
Since I wanted to design items that could generate conversation, I picked out quintessential English staples people might easily recognize: hot cross buns, mincemeat, biscuits, tea cakes, puff pastries, black treacle toffee, jam scones, raspberry buns and more.
I also was drawn to something called ginger wine, which appears to be a tincture. This list is starting to sound a bit like the Great British Bake Off—and I like to imagine my British great-grandmother would do quite well in an early 20th-century version of my favorite baking competition!
I chose mostly dining products (the table runner and cocktail napkins) because I envisioned having my family over for a proper British tea party to celebrate my great-grandmother. Since I was inspired by her recipe book, it was a natural fit to be able to pull these items out when I want to create a heartfelt dining tablescape. My next phase will be working my way through her book to recreate her recipes!
First, I took high-resolution photos of the pages of the book in natural lighting about five feet from a window. To create the designs to upload onto Spoonflower, I made two different seamless repeats in Adobe® Photoshop®, taking care to carefully remove the background of my images.
I sized repeat #1 as 20×20” (50.8 cm x 50.8 cm) at 150 dpi which, due to the way they print, allowed me to get a single order of (four) cocktail napkins that are each slightly different since they are a smaller size of 10×10” (25.4 cm x 25.4 cm).
For the table runner, I created a seamless repeat that was the same width but half the height of the finished table runner so that the pattern repeated twice. This allows me to frame the recipes exactly the way I wanted them—and include more of them.
Last, I created a non-repeating file for the wall hanging based on tea towel measurements.
I ordered my aunts each a tea towel to start and gave my mom the three items I created for this blog post. For myself, I think I will order another wall hanging and some dinner napkins, which are my favorite. If you are creating your own family recipe project, be sure to click the “See All Products” button within your Design Library to see (and order) the home decor items you love most. I may even print the recipes on wallpaper—how cool would that be?
As I mentioned for the recipes themselves, I plan to start working my way through them one delicious sweet bake after another. As a vegetarian, I will swap out the lard for something else, and I will need to experiment with an egg replacer as I don’t eat those either. Many of these recipes do not have instructions, because who has time for that when you know exactly what you’re doing!
Everyone absolutely loved them! One of my aunts is planning to frame her tea towel for safekeeping and my mom was just so proud to see her grandmother’s heirloom pieces in this tangible way.
As seen in Martha Stewart and Southern Living, the family recipe tea towel is the perfect DIY gift for anyone in your family.
View PostLaurie Shipley is a full-time dreamer and part-time writer, illustrator, designer and lettering artist from Durham, North Carolina, USA. She works in brand marketing and takes on the occasional commission when time allows. Check out more of her work at LaurieShipley.com and connect with her on Instagram.
2 comments
Love this idea, I will visit my mom soon, and this post gave me the idea to take a look to her cooking book, she used to have a beautiful hand writing!
What a wonderful idea, Alex!
Laurie did a great job with this post, creating such beautiful work celebrating and honoring Beatrice’s recipes!
Best,
Betsy
Spoonflower
Is there a something other than photo shop to get the recipe ready for print?
Hi Mary Lou!
You can find more detailed information at this link: https://support.spoonflower.com/hc/en-us/sections/200793490-Designing-Uploading
And while this link is specific to a tea towel, it also shares more info that might be helpful, including alternate programs to use: https://support.spoonflower.com/hc/en-us/articles/360055113052-How-To-Design-A-Recipe-Tea-Towel
And if you need help revising your design, you might find this of use: https://support.spoonflower.com/hc/en-us/articles/205257760-Revising-Your-Design.
Hope that helps!
Best,
Betsy
Spoonflower
These are wonderful! A couple of years ago, my friend and Spoonflower designer Suzan Engler helped me create placemats using family recipes. They were a great gift to family members however they aren’t being used. All are afraid of ruining them with food spills so I’ll need to figure out a solution to coax them into use 🙂
Hi Cindy,
Thanks so much for reading my family’s story! I absolutely love to hear that you’ve also created home decor heirlooms from family recipes—it’s so satisfying to appreciate them in this tangible way, isn’t it?
Preserving the integrity of your Spoonflower home decor and fabrics is easy with our care instructions. Maybe this will help your family feel better about using yours? My table runner and cloth napkins are going to be reserved for special occasions, but the great thing about them is that I can keep the actual recipe book tucked away for safekeeping while enjoying the more durable cloth products!
Here are our care instructions in case that helps:
https://support.spoonflower.com/hc/en-us/articles/204444760-Caring-for-Your-Spoonflower-Products
Warmly,
Laurie Shipley