Category Archives: Accessories

Stitch It: Embellished Flour Sack Towels

If you’re searching for an easy but appreciated DIY hostess gift, this fancy flour sack towel tutorial may be just the thing!

Because these can be made with or without a sewing machine, I thought they’d be the perfect first tutorial to share in the Stitch It series that I’ve been wanting to write for ages.

I whipped these up at Christmas as a gift, but if you just switch up the fabric, you can make these flour sack towels for any season or color palette.

DIY Fancy Flour Sack Tea Towel Tutorial | The Borrowed Abode

I didn’t take photos of the process because I was busy just trying to get them made – but I think it’s simple enough that you can follow these easy steps:

Materials Needed:

  • Flour sack towel
  • Cotton quilting fabric – at least 1″ wider than your flour sack towel
  • Pom-Pom Trim or other trim of your choice – at least 1″ wider than your flour sack towel
  • Iron-on hem tape
  • Iron
  • Sewing machine – OR – needle and thread

Let’s Get Stitching:

1.  Measure the width flour sack towel and cut a 5″ strip of patterned fabric that is at least 1″ wider than your flour sack towel.  For example:  My towels are 30″ wide, so I cut my patterned fabric strips at  31″ x 5″.

2.  Using the iron-on hem tape, adhere the fabric strip to the towel at the spot where you want it to go. Make sure you center the strip so that a 1/2 inch of fabric sticks out at each side of the towel.

  • Sewing Machine Version: I just use a few pieces of iron-on hem tape to help hold the strip in place for machine sewing.
  • No Sew Version: Use extra-strong hem tape to adhere all the edges. Iron on high heat with steam for best adhesion.  See photo below for where to use the tape.

Embellished Tea Towel Tutorial 2 | The Borrowed Abode

3.  Once the strip is adhered to the front, turn the towel over.  Fold the flaps of patterned fabric over and use more iron-on hem tape to adhere them to the back of the towel. Before I iron them on, I like to trim them to be nice and neat, just the width of the towel’s hem.  (See detail photo below.)

Embellished Tea Towels Back Side | The Borrowed Abode

4. Repeat this iron-on hem tape process to adhere the fun trim (pom-poms or whatever trim you choose) to the bottom edge of the towel. Don’t forget to fold over and trim the ends again.   Again, if you aren’t going to use a sewing machine, iron and steam this carefully to get a good adhesion.

5. Stitch it!

  • Sewing Machine Version:  Use a regular presser foot on your machine, and set the machine to a medium-width and length zig-zag or overlock stitch.  Sew along every edge of the patterned fabric to attach it well and prevent fraying.
  • No-Sew Version:  If you’ve used heavy-duty hem tape and have ironed it really well with steam, it technically should be fine.  However, I’d recommend threading a needle and just putting a simple running stitch along every edge.  This is easy to do while watching TV, etc.

6:  Iron it and admire your work!Embellished Tea Towels 4 | The Borrowed Abode

I hope you found this tutorial useful.  Please, if you have any questions or are confused, let me know in the comments below! I promise I’ll answer – if not today, within a few days. :)

New to sewing and wondering what supplies you need?  Check out my fabric bunting tutorial for a list of my must-have sewing supplies.

Dining Room Art Wall Dilemma: Prints or Paintings?

I’m rethinking my approach to the gallery wall in our dining room/kitchen area.  Here’s why:

The dining/living/kitchen area is all open and flow-y.  Or something like that. And that’s why I’m starting to think that the art that goes on one of the two dining area walls should fit the same style as the rest of that are.

For example, on the living room wall we have two paintings, one of which is this:

Living Room Oil Painting Corner | The Borrowed Abode

And if you continue down that wall to the dining area, we have a moody Ships at Sea painting which I picked up at Just L, our favorite mid-century modern shop, during the minimoon.  I am absolutely in love with both of these paintings.

Dining Room Painting Ships | The Borrowed Abode

So with that in mind, I think it might be too random and clashing to have the opposite dining room wall display a growing gallery of random modern art prints and photos, framed in plain white frames.

Dining Room Beginning Art Gallery Wall | The Borrowed Abode

The photo above shows the current state of the wall (I just spackled all the holes in preparation for refreshing the paint).

If we continue that white frame wall over to the island, that’s going to be a heck of a lot of white on that wall.  I feel like it may just look boring.  I don’t like boring.

Random old paintings, however, in funky ridiculous old lady frames, however, may add a little more fun to the wall while blending better with the rest of the art we have in the entertaining spaces of the first floor.

Here’s some of what I’m loving, via Etsy, right now:

1.  This Moulin Rouge oil painting via Shop on Sherman at Etsy.  But at $190 it’s a little more than I think we’d like to spend right now. The style is so much like the Italian painting in our living room.

Moulin Rouge Oil Painting via ShopOnSherman on Etsy

This set of two miniature Dutch Oil Paintings via LittleBearandBunny on Etsy.  I am really craving some miniature sets of paintings right now, I have no idea why.

Miniature Dutch Oil Paintings

With this in mind, I’m actually wondering if I could mix some older, classical-style paintings with some of our more modern art prints that we love, such as the Washington DC print in our kitchen photo above.

What do you think?  If I popped the pop art into some old Granny style frames, would that help it all come together as a cohesive collection?  Or do I need to pick one style – prints or old paintings?

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DIY Decor Fail: Decorative Kitchen Shelf

I have been struggling with how best to use the dining room/kitchen wall space for the three years we’ve lived in this house.

In October I thought we’d finally come up with a solution: A small gallery wall in the left side of the dining area  (below), and a shelf over the random kitchen island on which to display my awesome collection of vintage cream pitchers.   Dining Room Before | The Borrowed Abode

(Sidenote: I have no idea how I ended up collecting vintage cream pitchers. But I do love them.)

We looked at all the different shelves online.  Photo ledges – too narrow.  Chunky floating shelves – too many complaints about sagging and instability.  Regular shelves – too bracket-y.

The Container Store came to our rescue with an awesome set of shelf clip brackets.  They’re sturdy enough to keep the shelf supported well, but low-profile enough to work with our existing decor.

I saved money by using an existing board from my stash in the basement.  I stained it a few times, adding different stains until it was practically the same color as our cabinetry.  I was pretty proud of my color-matching ability.

Kitchen Shelf Fail1 | The Borrowed Abode In the photo above, you can see where I hung the shelf over the island.

What you can’t see is how it was such an epic failure.

For some reason my anchors wouldn’t lodge in the wall, so the shelf was just hanging on by a thread. I think I needed longer anchors, for thicker drywall, but I didn’t feel like going to buy some right then.Kitchen Shelf Fail2

So it sat there for a few days, and do you know what?  I realized that I didn’t like the shelf there.  It felt too random.  Ryan agreed, and we decided to just extend the gallery wall concept for the entire stretch of that wall.

It’s annoying that I have to patch the wall now, and then touch up the paint – but sometimes you have to just try a design idea in order to know it’s not the right one.

Now we have a bigger challenge: Ryan and I have to agree on some more art for the gallery wall!
And because January is the month of “finishing abandoned tasks,” I have to at least get the frames hung.

Have you ever had a total failure with wall anchors?  I didn’t realize that drywall came in different thicknesses.

Bathroom Decor and Organization Update & Wall-Mounted Vase Review

It’s time for a much overdue bathroom decor update.  Come on in, there’s plenty of room . . .

I haven’t shared a lot about decor or organization for our main bathroom.  There’s not a lot to decorate in this space.  Many of my old apartment bathrooms were cold, ugly, awkward . . . giving me more of a decorating and storage challenge.  Unlike those apartment bathrooms, this one was renovated completely prior to our move-in, so I haven’t had to try hard to make it look nice.

When you last saw the forgotten bathroom,  I had just hung clear teardrop vases from CB2 on the one blank wall large enough to decorate:

Bathroom Glass Hanging Vases | TheBorrowedAbode.com

I loved the look of the wall-mounted vases, but they didn’t work out for me in the long run.

First, they were quick to display dust, a problem that was solved by running them through the dishwasher occasionally.

Second, when I hung fresh flowers in them the flowers would leave marks against the walls as they wilted and got older, and one time a sad flower blossom stuck to the wall and left a big smear in its wake. Granted, if I were Martha Stewart and changed out my fresh flowers every three days, wilted flowers leaving marks on walls wouldn’t have been an issue.

Giving up on the fresh florals, I tried using some fake flower stems in the vases for a lower-maintenance look.  This didn’t work out well at all – I couldn’t add water to the vases with fake flower stems in them, and so there was no counter-balance weight to hold them in place.  If I didn’t place the floral stems just right, the vases would tilt and spin on their wall hooks.  I was worried they could fall off the wall, so down they came.

I didn’t give a hoot that the vases didn’t work out, because Ryan and I found the perfect replacement!

Hoot Owl Giclee Print Funnelcloud on Etsy

Credit: Funnelcloud on Etsy

This awesome Hoot Owl Giclee Print is from my friend Rachel’s shop, Funnelcloud Studio.   It was the perfect piece of art to add some much-needed color to that wall.  I love the blues and greens as a starting point to add more color to the bathroom with new towels and a rug, for example.

Bathroom Owl Art Nov 2012 | TheBorrowedAbode.com

I framed the print in a super cheap frame and photo mat from Michael’s – I was glad I could find a frame that matched the mirror and cabinetry so closely in color and style.

I also added some smaller organization and decor touches that I’ll share too, since we’re already talking bathrooms.

We have to keep our soap and lotion on top of a tray so they don’t scar the marble counter more, so we included the glass tray and the small glass canisters from Crate & Barrel in our wedding registry. We also store our electric toothbrush and toothpaste on the tray . . . not sure where it got off to in this photo.

 Bathroom Counter Organization | TheBorrowedAbode.com

Do you see the little electric toothbrush heads stuck to the wall next to our “Blue Canary In The Outlet By The Light Switch“?  We couldn’t find a good way to store them, so I was excited to find this stick-on toothbrush holderon Amazon. If we had a cabinet above the sink, we’d have installed it inside the cabinet door. But since we don’t, we just used the back corner of the wall.  They’re out of the way but easy to grab.  

On the other side of the bathroom I’ve added a few things.  My painting from Italy needs a custom frame and I need to just get that done . . . I just forget.  But once I get it framed I think it will be too large for that wall, so I need to find another space in the house.

Bathroom Nov 2012 | TheBorrowedAbode.com

We’ve got a ton of orchid plants leftover from our wedding, and I’ve jokingly referred to the bathroom as the “Orchid Hospital.”  Orchids that were close to death have come gloriously back to life in the bathroom, probably because it gets so humid from the shower.  So now I’m rotating a few of our dozen orchids through the bathroom each month.

Second, the monogrammed cross stitch hand towels were a sweet wedding gift from a college friend.  They come out when company is visiting . . . or apparently when I’m taking photos for the blog. :)Bathroom Nov 2012 Naked Man | TheBorrowedAbode.com

Oh wait. . . you want to know about the naked man? 

Are you telling me you don’t have a naked man swinging from a pole in your bathroom?  The Naked Man was found on the floor of my friend’s mom’s car as I rode to the wedding ceremony.  I stuck him inside my purse and he came along for the ride.  He’s hung out in different scenarios at the Borrowed Abode ever since . . . and this last stop in the bathroom was Ryan’s doing. I’ll have to share The Full Adventures of the Naked Man at another time.

Disclaimer: I have not been compensated in any way for the product commentary included here. I purchased both the art and the vases – and all opinions are my own.  This post does contain Amazon affiliate links.