Tutorial: Appliqued Kiddie Kitchen Hand Towel

I found Luke this oven at a Mom2Mom sale a few weeks ago. I'd been looking for a kitchen that was a) not too girly and b) would not take up too much room in my small house. This one, I thought, was perfect. It's technically not a kitchen, of course. Just an oven. But good enough, right?

I have it on good authority that the Easter bunny is bringing some toy food to complete the fun. And that a certain set of grandparents are buying some pots and pans. That particular grandpa is a little weirded out by the idea of his grandson playing with a kitchen. Phhhssstt, I say to that. It's fine. But I thought it might be nice to add a homemade, boy-ish, touch.

This is what I came up with! A little hand-towel to fit on his oven-door handle, complete with his initials and a truck applique. It was fairly simple. I traced a dishtowel for my pattern, cutting just one square out of terry cloth. Then I added some homemade bias tape leftover from a Christmas table runner.

After it was bound, I decided to try to freehand draw a truck and applique it to the towel. I needed it to be bigger than the letters, so they would fit on the side of the truck. First, I ironed-on the Heat'N Bond to the wrong side of the fabric. Then I drew the truck right onto the iron-on paper, using my letters as a guide. Then I cut.

Once I had the truck cut, I ironed the letters on. (They came from Arts and Scraps more than a year ago!) I didn't have the letters to spell "Luke," but did have his initials. So that worked.

I'm not a very good drawer, so this was the best I could do. I think next time, I would cut the window out. Or Google for an image to copy. As it is, I'm not sure it reads "truck" or "train." I guess either way, right?

I appliqued it on using a "satin stitch" and white thread, so my mistakes would blend in. I'm still getting acquainted with appliqueing. So, yes, there were lots of mistakes. The sewing is a little funky and uneven. Suzanne from the blog Just Another Hang Up had a great post on how to applique this week. Very helpful advice.

So that's it! A quick and simple extra for the Easter basket. What do you think? Does it man it up a little bit? I think next I might make a little kid-sized pot-holder. Wouldn't that be sweet? And of course, you could easily make one of these for a girl by changing up the bias tape, color scheme and the applique (maybe a butterfly would be cute, eh?).