Chickens in my Kitchen.

Hello, Dearies!

I am not going to try to catch up on everything I haven't told about for the past six months. I'm not going to do it chronologically either, because right now, I just want to show you my chicken towels.

I have chicken towels!!

Way back in October, we went home to visit my family in Tennessee. While I was there, my mom gave me heaps and piles of fabric - woo hoo! She also gave me a lot of canning jars, and since we have a compact sedan, I actually had to pack some of the fabric in the canning jars.

Alas, I digress.

Along with the heaps and piles of fabric, she gave me some 'half a towels' - towels that were already cut in two so they could be made into these handy-dandy hanging towels for drying your paws after you wash them. The half a towels have been sitting in my craft space since October, waiting patiently for me to muster up some creativity (and a little spare time).

Enter the book Bend-the-Rules Sewing, by Amy Karol. There is nothing in it about making those hanging kitchen towels, but there is a delightful blend of instructions and encouragment - just enough of both to get me feeling creative and adventurous.

And so, I present to you, the chicken towels.



Aren't they handy? Aren't they dandy? Do you love them half as much as I do? If you do, you're swooning already. I'll give you a minute to recover....

M'kay. Here is the first one I did. I had this brilliant idea to use a buttonhole instead of a loop, because I thought it would be super cool. It would also challenge me to learn how to do a buttonhole.



First, I will confess - I chickened out (ha!) and used some zigzag 'creatively', instead of doing a buttonhole. It looks just like a buttonhole, but it's not a proper one, done by someone who actually knows how to use all the settings and gadgets on her sewing machine (because I am not that girl - yet!)

But it is the right size....if the knob on my cabinet were a button. Because the knob on my cabinet is very much not a button, and is much, much thicker than a button, technically, this does not work. To put this chicken towel on, I had to take the knob off the cabinet, load the towel from the back (much smaller) side, then screw the whole thing back together. I fear that a buttonhole large enough to fit over the front of the knob would gape open and look all droopy...so I'm not going to try it.

All of that discovery led me to my second design:



It's a simple loop, made of zigzagged bias tape (I do know how to use the zigzag button - yay!) that slips right over that very same knob. I don't have to dismantle anything to use it, and even though they have different towels on them and different ways to attach, I find them matchy, because that sewn part is so similar.

So that is what I did with my night a few nights back.

What have you been up to for half a year? I sure did miss y'all! Wait till I tell you about all the canning!

More soon,
-Laura at TenThingsFarm