Dandelion Print Tea Towels

How to Make

Yellow Tea Towel
1. Iron the folds out of the tea towel so that you have a flat surface to work with. Lay the tea towel onto a surface protected with paper or a messy mat and with a thick paint brush, cover the surface with yellow textile paint. Make sure you lift the tea towel off the surface once painted to ensure the paint hasn’t seeped through the fabric and stuck it to the paper beneath. Allow to dry for at least an hour.
2. Once dry, find the centre point of the tea towel by gently folding it into quarters. Cut a 15cm circle out of paper and lay it over the centre point of the tea towel. Then on top of the yellow surface, using the end of a cotton bud dipped in the blue textile paint, print dots around the outside of the circle. Don’t be too uniform with the pattern, it needs to represent a circular shape but not be too rigid – the more random the dots, the better. Now do the same to the left and the right of the centre circle, working in a portrait design so the 3 circles go across the whole width of the tea towel. Using the same cotton bud technique, add another layer of random dots around the inside edge of each circle and then a cluster of blue dots in the middle.
3. Next, working about 15cm up from the bottom edge of the tea towel, make a uniform line of blue dots by using a cocktail stick dipped in blue textile paint, keeping the dots evenly spaced apart. Try folding the bottom edge of the tea towel up to this point so that you have a straight edge to follow.
4. Fold the tea towel down and along the crease that’s been created make another uniform line of blue dots, this time using a cotton bud, then add another row in the same way directly below the first cocktail stick line.
5. Next, line up six toilet rolls equally spaced apart with their bottom edges around 4cm from the first cocktail stick dotted line. As you did with the larger circles before, trace around these with blue cotton bud dots, keeping the pattern quite loose, then add a cluster of dots inside each circle. Add more cotton bud dots around the outer circles so that the six circles blend together then fill the remaining space inside the circles with small dots created with the cocktail stick method.
6. In a uniform pattern, keeping the dots an equal distance apart, paint a blue dotted line around the six circles with a cocktail stick. Keeping the dots closer together then gradually further apart, work your way up from this line to the larger circles in the centre of the tea towel. Then fill in the gaps between the bottom of six circles and the dotted line beneath them using the same cocktail stick technique.
7. Finally, using a paint brush and following the sewn hem, paint a solid blue block along the bottom edge of the tea towel.
8. Turn the tea towel 180 degrees and repeat steps 3-7 on the remaining half.

White Tea Towel
1. Iron the creases out of the tea towel so you have a flat surface to work with then lay the tea towel onto a surface protected with paper or a messy mat.
2. Dip the end of a toilet roll into some blue textile paint, then working from the centre outwards print rings in a random pattern to cover the surface of the tea towel (approx. 20) with them getting slightly less condensed as you move away for the centre.
3. In the centre on each ring print a cluster of blue dots using a cotton bud dipped in blue textile paint.
4. Next, using a cocktail stick dipped in the blue paint, print small dots around the cluster and then some more around the outside of the bigger rings.
5. Now, using a new toilet roll repeat the same method as before but using yellow textile paint. Apply a few more rings this time (approx. 25) amongst the blue circles. Do this quite randomly and let some overlap each other. Repeat steps 3 and 4 with the yellow textile paint.

Top Tip

Make sure you keep changing cocktail sticks and cotton buds as you print your design. Over time they soak up paint and get flattened, which transfers too much paint onto the surface.