Decorative Embroidered Towel Ideas

Guest Bath Towels

• Guest hand towels are often displayed in half baths or guest bathrooms. Create towels with a relaxed appeal by embroidering nature patterns such as flowers, vines and insects. These subjects can provide a simple, country charm, especially if they are sewn in a cross-stitch pattern. For a more formal effect, choose an intricate design that includes scroll work or is taken from a historical period such as the Jacobean design found at Mary Corbet’s Needle ‘n Thread website. For the ultimate in luxury, create embroidered towels using the goldwork embroidery technique that involves using thread containing real, hammered gold.

Holiday Towels

• Holidays such as Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Easter often call for adding decorative touches throughout the house. For Halloween towels, embroider black cats, pumpkins, witches, skeletons and bats to orange or white towels. Thanksgiving towels can also depict pumpkins, as well as cornucopias, Pilgrims or turkeys. For Christmas towels, decide if you’d like a winter theme – snowmen, snowflakes, sleds and so on; a religious theme – angels, the nativity scene, the words “peace on earth”; or a secular theme – Santa, elves, gifts and bells. Valentine towels can depict embroidered hearts in shades of pink and red on white towels or be embroidered in white on pink and red towels. For Easter, embroider chicks, rabbits and eggs. Or, depict the cross, a dove or the words “He is risen,” for a more religious tone.

Family Towels

• Embroidering linens and towels with your family’s monogram is a time-worn tradition. If you’d like to stick to traditional rules of etiquette to create monograms on your family towels, create a three letter monogram with your last initial in the middle, flanked by your first initial on the left and middle initial on the right. The middle initial should be slightly larger than the other two. Create this individual monogram for each person in the family to keep track of towels in a shared bathroom. Modernize this monogram concept by embroidering your last name on all family towels or by spelling out each person’s first name for more personalized, yet casual, towels.

Kitchen Towels

• If your kitchen has a country vibe, embroider using the simple cross-stitch technique. Create homey towels that depict sayings such as “A watched pot never boils” or “Too many cooks spoil the broth.” Or, create a country effect with cross-stitched images of fruits, chickens, cows or pigs. For a more modern kitchen, go for abstract designs such as geometric shapes or a series of fleur-de-lis patterns. Kitchen towels can also be embroidered with the days of the week or personalized with the name of the person who does most of the cooking.