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How I made French look flour sack towels

French stripe flour sack tea towel

French stripe flour sack tea towel

I worked in a little time for crafting/experimenting this week. I’ve been wanting to stripe some flour sack tea towels to give them a French look for my kitchen. If I’ve read a tutorial on how to do this, it’s been a long time and I’ve forgotten everything I read, so I was pretty much on my own. Although it’s really nothing to crow about. Pretty simple stuff here. But I’m a-gonna tell you how I did it.

Here’s what you need:

French stripe flour sack tea towel

  • Flour sack towels — I used Main Stays flour sack kitchen towels from Wal-Mart
  • Wax paper or something similar to protect the surface you’re working on. Don’t want the paint to bleed through onto your pretty dining room table or anything.
  • Fabric paint or, in this case, I used Martha Stewart’s multi-surface craft paint
  • Painter’s tape
  • A stencil brush
  • You’ll also need a ruler and marker seen in the next photo
  • ***Update. I didn’t use this, but textile medium is probably a must have.

French stripe flour sack tea towel

  1. Fold your towel in half lengthwise. You want to measure from the center rather than in from the sides. These towels have wavy sides and your stripes would be all kinds of crooked if you measured from the side. So. Again. Decide how wide you want your center stripe and measure half that distance all the way down the center. I wanted my stripe to be 2-1/2″ so I measured 3/4″ and made little marks every few inches to help keep the painter’s tape straight.
  2. Lay down your tape to your marks. I didn’t take a picture of this step, but I’m pretty sure you can use your imagination.
  3. Now, while still folded, flip the towel over.
    French stripe flour sack tea towel
    You won’t need to make marks this time because you can see the tape through the fabric. Lay your tape down on this side of the fold using the first tape as a guide.
  4. Unfolded, it looks like this:
    French stripe flour sack tea towel
  5. Now you’re ready to paint. Using your stencil brush, dab in an up and down motion on the fabric between the tape pieces. You can pull the tape off as soon as you finish.
  6. Once that is dried, mark off your other lines and repeat the painting step on the new lines.
  7. Pull the tape off and let it dry. You’re done!

A note about paints. Try to find a color you like right out of the bottle. It’s hard to mix enough to do as many as you want. And… I thought I had mixed the color right, but when I put it on the fabric, it so wasn’t what I wanted. It’s back to the drawing board on that. Hoping to find a color that more closely matches what I have in mind.

Hope you give it a try!

French stripe flour sack tea towel

5 thoughts on “How I made French look flour sack towels

  1. nice to meet another wanda – love your towel idea – tks for sharing.

    1. Oh, God bless! I always kinda wished I was a Debbie or a Carol or something. :-; Good to meet you, too and thanks for stopping by!

  2. I love it!! Thank you for the idea.

  3. I love this idea. Does the paint wash out of the towels on the laundry?

    1. I have painted on fabric for years, I have never had it wash out, very little fading either, but if this faded it would only add to to vintage look and feel IMO.

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