Take a look around your nearest charity shop, jumble sale or car boot – we can practically guarantee you’ll discover some excellent vintage fabric finds,. Here’s how you can upcycle vintage tea towels!
Old tea towels are an especially good item to pick up, so hoard them if you find them cheaply in a print that you like. Their hard-wearing fabrics are so versatile: tough enough for upholstery yet soft enough to be workable for children’s clothing.
After spending a few delightful hours poking around the thousands of upcycling craft blogs out there, we’ve chosen ten excellent ways to upcycle vintage print tea towels. Which is your favourite?
1. Put up a pair of tea towel curtains
Clever! Two retro tea towels have found a second life as a chic pair of kitchen curtains, with the addition of a few rings at the top. We imagine this could be done and dusted in less than an hour!
2. Sew a tea towel cushion cover
What do you think of these bright and beautiful cushion covers? An inexpensive project for even the most inexperienced of sewers – if you use a sewing machine these could be plumping up your sofa in no time!
3. Make tea towel wall art
Some pieces of vintage print fabric are works of art in their own right, worthy of a space on the wall. If you find a vintage tea towel that you particularly love and can’t bring yourself to take the scissors to it, why not have it framed instead?
4. Make tea towel lavender sachets for drawers
The great thing about these lavender sachets, apart from their simplicity, is the fact that you can make use of a tea towel that might have seen better days by cutting off any parts with fraying, stains or burn marks.
5. Cover old chair seats with tea towels
These chairs received a new lease of life with a splash of red paint and some vintage tea towel upholstery. With their jolly good looks, they’d be perfect for a child’s bedroom.
6. Make a tea towel tote bag
Beautiful, practical and eco-friendly! What’s not to love about this gorgeous tote bag, sewn from a 1970s linen tea towel? Take it along with you when you shop and there’s no need to pick up wasteful plastic bags. Here’s the easy to follow tutorial from DIY Candy.
7. Patchwork a tea towel pincushion
This neat little pincushion is another useful project if you want to use up some fabric odds and ends from a much loved tea towel that’s getting a bit ratty. Also good if you want to try out a simple patchwork job before attempting something more complicated.
8. Sew a tea towel skirt
Little girls going through a ‘loving-everything-frou-frou’ phase will go crazy for this pretty lace-edged skirt. It’s so charming that grown-ups may even want to try their hand at making something similar for themselves!
9. Make a tea towel pet pillow
This comfy pet pillow is smart, however it’s also pretty plain and we could see it suffering the effects of dirty paws before a day was out. We’d recommend trying this with a darker, perhaps patterned vintage tea towel for a funky pet hang out that won’t immediately look grubby!
10. Upholster a foot stool with tea towels
These cute footstools aren’t from the posts of a home design blog; they’re actually an artist project based around Australian culture. Either way, we wouldn’t be above ‘borrowing’ this idea to make our own brightly patterned stool using a vintage tourist souvenir tea towel. Don’t they look great?
What do you think of these vintage fabric upcycling ideas? Share your thoughts with us here or on Twitter and Facebook!
One Response
Brilliant. I want to reupholster a chair!