DIY: How to Print Handwritten Recipes on Tea Towels & Kitchen Towels

DIY: How to Print Handwritten Recipes on Tea Towels & Kitchen Towels

Gone are the days of stashing away these recipes where they get lost, regardless of your organizational efforts. With recipe tea towels, you unite convenience with stewardship to create something beautiful and moving. Keep reading to learn how to turn handwritten recipes into tea towels to keep those memories and flavors alive for years to come.  

Everyone has those scraps of family recipes, handwritten in familiar cursive and packed with flavorful wisdom to be followed for generations to come. While it can be easy to misplace these tiny papers or accidentally discard them, printed recipe tea towels are a trendy and gorgeous way to preserve them.

We’ll discuss three options for turning handwritten recipes into tea towels below. These include: 

  • Option 1. Heat Transfer With an Iron
  • Option 2. Hand Trace 
  • Option 3. Use Cotton Creations’ Custom Printing Services

Handwritten Recipe Towels — An Easy but Sentimental Gift or Keepsake

Kitchen towels and tea towels make a perfect canvas for your favorite flavor blueprints. 

Perhaps you remember visiting your grandmother’s house and being greeted with a hot and delicious pie fresh out of the oven. Or maybe your mouth still waters at the thought of your great aunt’s cookies, placed upon a festive tablescape and gifted to you during the holidays. 

Recipes are often shared in families for generations to keep those memories and flavors intact. Handwritten ones help us remember our dear family members even more as we carry a piece of them, translating unique handwriting into the dishes we’ve loved for years. However, these tiny scraps of paper can be easy to lose and vulnerable to kitchen messes. 

Personalized kitchen towels with recipes are easy to make and help us remember fond memories and preserve mouth-watering recipes. Creating your own enables you to cherish those important to you, and they also make incredibly sentimental and unique gifts. Present them to a friend or family member, and their eyes are sure to light up at these tangible family heirlooms. 

You can get those handwritten recipes printed on dish towels for daily use, and we’ve found three ways to do this. Learn how to print a recipe on a dish towel, including the tools required and tips for creating these sentimental and gorgeous keepsakes: 

Option 1. Heat Transfer With an Iron 

The heat transfer method is super fast and super easy. You won’t need to sew or mess around with computer programs for this one to get a replica of your recipe on a towel. You can easily make multiple towels with the method, and the transfer paper is generally inexpensive and easy to find in your local craft store.

heat transfer method

What You Need

You will need the following items to begin:

  1. Transfer sheet paper
  2. Your handwritten recipe
  3. Scissors
  4. Tea or kitchen towels — flour sack towel in soft white or deluxe bright white will blend your recipe with the fabric, depending on the color of the paper your recipe is written on.
  5. An iron

Steps on How to Turn Your Recipe Into a Sentimental Towel Design

Here are some directions for your convenience:

  1. Scan the recipe: You can use a printer, scanning device or photo-editing software to scan your recipe. Alternatively, you might write the recipe down on a separate sheet of paper to scan if the original is old or washed out. 
  2. Print the recipe onto the transfer paper: Place your transfer paper in the printer and then print your recipe in mirror image format so the wording is backward on the transfer paper. 
  3. Cut away excess material: When you have a satisfactory copy of your recipe on the transfer paper, use scissors to cut away any extra material surrounding the words. 
  4. Iron your flour cloth towels: You’ll want fresh, brand-new tea towels or ironed towels to ensure the transfer looks its best. 
  5. Lay your printed sheet face-down on the towel: Decide where you want to place your recipe on your towel and lay it face-down before ironing.
  6. Set your iron to the cotton setting: Ensure you set your iron to the “cotton” setting and that there is no water on your towel’s surface.
  7. Press your iron down firmly on the recipe: Do not slide the iron over the cloth — simply press the iron firmly on the area where the wording is placed and hold for 30 seconds before moving to the next section. 
  8. Allow it to cool off: After this process, allow at least one minute for the transfer paper to cool off.
  9. Peel the transfer paper away:  Slowly peel your transfer paper away from the flour cloth. 

Tip: Sew your fabric material to the edges of the flour cloth towel for a more polished, elegant finish. 

Option 2. Hand Trace

The hand trace method is a straightforward way to make a custom-printed recipe tea towel. With a steady hand, you can create gorgeous recipe tea towels with your family recipe preserved for years.

What You Need

For this method, you’ll need the following:

  • A clean, pressed tea towel — tea towels in natural, unbleached beige create a rustic finished product
  • A fabric marker or craft market suitable to use on fabrics
  • A favorite handwritten recipe
  • Tape

Steps on How To Hand Trace Your Handwritten Recipe 

To hand-trace your recipe tea towel, follow these steps: 

  1. Scan and increase the image sizes of your recipes.
  2. Print the recipe onto 11 by 14-inch paper.
  3. Tape your recipe to the back of your flour sack so it won’t move while tracing. 
  4. Carefully trace the handwriting onto the tea towel with your marker.

Tip: If the recipe words aren’t showing well through the tea towel, tape your towel onto a window or use a flashlight to illuminate the words.

Creative idea: Try sewing tassels or pom poms to the edges of your towels to create a fun and unique custom-printed recipe tea towel.

cotton creations custom printing

Option 3. Use Cotton Creations’ Custom Printing Services

Turn handwritten recipes into tea towels with Cotton Creations’ custom printing services. Our easy and convenient service allows you to quickly create a gorgeous hand towel with just a few clicks. Enjoy the same sentiments of creating it yourself without the work or hassle, and make something that will be loved and used in the kitchen for years to come. 

What You Need

All you need for this the following method is:

  • Your handwritten recipe
  • Cotton Creation’s website

Steps for How You Can Get Your Own Custom Printed Towel

The following are some steps for creating handwritten recipe gifts on our website:

  1. Scan and upload your recipe to our Design Station.
  2. Choose the size of your recipe and the type of towel you’d like to use.
  3. Add your finished design to the cart and click to order! 

Creating a handwritten recipe printed on a tea towel, you’ll have a sentimental keepsake like no other. Cherish those memories and keep the delicious recipes alive for years to come with Cotton Creations. 

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