Christmas for my family is centered around spending time together, opening gifts, playing cards and eating. One thing that we always have to make for our Christmas sweets table is homemade chocolate covered cherries. It's a recipe my mom started making when I was a child. The duty was passed down to me when I married and now, my daughter also makes them (although she is known for soaking her cherries in alcohol first). I've shared the recipe here on my blog a couple of years ago, but I decided to share it with my family on an original recipe tea towel I designed.
I decided I wanted to expand my tea towel designing skills and actually incorporate my own drawings in a festive border. I drew lots of little black and white sketches that I uploaded into Photoshop. I colored the sketches in Photoshop then arranged the elements into a border. I used a couple of different fonts for the recipe heading and another font for the ingredients and directions. When I was happy with the design, I uploaded it to Spoonflower and ordered my fabric. I had the tea towels printed on linen cotton canvas ultra and I love the texture and weight of the fabric.
I'm having so much fun with this whole textile design thing, but I need to come up with new ideas on what to print it on because I think my family may get tired of tea towels for gifts! One of my goals for the new year is to design a collection of Christmas fabrics that I can use to make new Christmas stockings for my family. I have all sorts of ideas in my head and can't wait to start putting it on paper. Do you have any sewing, quilting, designing goals for the new year? Please share!
Wishing everyone a Happy and Healthy New Year!
~Sharla
I love cherries dipped in chocolate, and with added spirits, sounds wonderful. The thing about tea towels is, it is the gift that keeps on giving. Unless they are kept for good, they do eventually need replaced, or do in our house. So a steady stream of personal ones sounds wonderful to me. Happy New Year Sharla x
ReplyDeleteWhat a cool family tradition that you were able to commemorate, Sharla! I think designing fabric for custom stockings sounds like a fun adventure. I look forward to seeing how it comes together for you. :)
ReplyDeleteNever a truer statement has been made into a tea towel! What a wonderful gift for your family members. I lose recipe cards all the time, my towels I keep up with so I think this is a marvelous idea!
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