Flour Sack Towels make great gifts. And they are easy to make, I show you how to make all of them! I also teach you to design your own! You can never have enough towels in the kitchen. There are others here from last year.
There are 6 different designs so one ought to please everyone. All 7 are in the Design Space file including the template, but I divided up the SVG files into 7 different files. Make one or all of them. Several of them require layering the vinyl. I cover how to do that in detail here. But I will talk a little about that in this tutorial, too.
What you will need
- Various types and colors of HTV
- Blank flour sack towels
- Iron or Easy Press
- Download File(s)
Cutting the Vinyl For the Flour Sack Towels
If you only knew how many times I have cut the wrong side of HTV. LOL. I use a pick to separate a very small part of the HTV in a space I am going to weed anyway. It is easy to tell which side is the HTV and which side is the backing. Put the backing side down. BTW if you ever cut the wrong side, just turn it over and re-cut. Most brands the backing is thick enough that you didn’t cut all the way through it anyway. It makes weeding a little more difficult because you now have two images, one reversed on the wrong side, but at least the vinyl isn’t wasted.
Obviously you cut each color separately. If you cut all six flour sack towels at once, the colors are coordinated so multiple towel will be cut from the same color. Move the colors around the mat to save vinyl. It works best on most of the towels to attach the same colors together. This keeps the spacing in tact. An exception to this rule is the little berries on the Yule towel. Join each bough berries together but not all of them.
Here are the basics of moving images around the mat.
Weeding the Flour Sack Towels
Once the pattern is all cut, you need to weed it. I have a Cricut Bright Pad . It makes the weeding easier. So does a bright overhead light.
Also you will need a sharp pick. I have a set from Harbor Freight that cost 2 or 3 dollars. I have just found a pinpen from 651vinyl.com that works great. While you are there look at the weeding ring. It is great! I used to stick the weeded vinyl to my hand but my skin had a reaction to the sticky. The weeding ring solved that.
Here is another trick that works well. Rub a very little bit of baby powder on the back of the vinyl. You will be able to see the lines clearly. If you do this, make sure to wipe the baby powder off with a damp rag before applying the vinyl. It works especially well on glitter vinyl, which is harder to weed
Ironing the Flour Sack Towels
I have an Easypress. I used it for these projects because of the size of the designs. Look up the settings at Cricut’s Heat Guide based on what type of vinyl you are using. If you use an iron, you will have to reposition it to cover the whole design.
With an iron set and the highest setting without steam, warm the area you are going to put the design on then place the design where you want it. Press fairly hard on the design in segments. Use a lot of pressure. You are trying to melt the material and force it between the fibers. After you have pressed each area, go over the whole design slowly a few times.
Some of the vinyl I used was warm peel vinyl. The only way I know to tell the difference if you don’t have the label is to try it while warm and if the vinyl sticks to the paper, let it cool more. Glitter vinyl is not warm peel. If it doesn’t stick well try again. Glitter vinyl is very difficult to melt. This make take a few tries.
After it cools and I’ve taken the paper off, I always repress the design just to make sure it seals. If you repress the design, use parchment paper between the iron and your design.
Again, if you are layering your vinyl, never put a layer on top of glitter or foil vinyl. It just wont stick.
Working with Multiple Layer Designs
Designing Your Own Flour Sack Towels
Hidden in the Design Space file is the template or you can download the template SVG separately. The template is designed to cover the showing panel of a tri-folded towel, That is the usual size and shape that is covered. You can make flour sack towels in any theme you want.
Fit your design inside this template and it will look great. You can use the same graphic repeated in different sizes like the football towel above. Or create your own scene from different parts like other flour sack towels. Adding a phrase will take up space and add a theme. Sometimes you can find an image, like the words towel, which can be sized to the area you need to fill.
Try to keep the number of colors to a minimum. Every color you use is another type of vinyl you need to cut and fit together. And if you aren’t fairly good at layering, don’t have different colors right next to each other, like the gnomes towel. That one was a bite to fit together!
If you are layering, use a good HTV like Cricut brand or HTVRont brand that releases easily or you will have difficulty. Also if you use glitter or metallic foil, make sure they are on the top layer. Other HTV will not stick to them well.
