Inspiration
Friday Fun: Our Tea Towel and 6 Ways to Use It
We haven’t really talked about one of our favorite things in the Holiday Shop: the MDK 2023 calendar tea towel.
We have a deep and abiding love of tea towels. We have stacks of them, and each one is a reminder of a place, a trip, a person, a time.
Each year, our resident artist Hannah Jones creates a new design. For 2023? It’s twelve months of MDK dishcloths.
What do you do with a tea towel? Does it require the drinking of tea? Is there some ritual for a tea towel involving flapping it around or otherwise doing tea-related things with it?
Absolutely not. A tea towel is good for whatever you like. Here are our top tips.
- Dry your dishes.
- Bundle it around baked goods.
- Hang it on a hook in the kitchen so you can give your fingers a quick wipe.
- Hang it on a wall in the kitchen as art.
- Give it to that friend who clearly has a need for a tea towel.
- Wrap up a gift with it. A stack of handknit dishcloths wrapped in an MDK tea towel really communicates DISHCLOTHS ARE A THING.
Do you have a favorite tea towel? Tell us all about it!
Our Holiday Hangout
Maybe you’re just getting in the mood for holiday shopping. I get it. I’ve barely got my tree in the house.
If you’re feeling festive now and would like to settle in with us for a bit, here’s our recent Zoom, where Kay and I talk about the Holiday Shop offerings. If you’d like to shop along with us, here’s the Holiday Shop lookbook that we’re exploring in the Zoom. A few things may be in low supply at this point, but there’s plenty to enjoy.
My worn out, thin as a sheet of tissue paper, blue and white tea towel has dried dishes, hands, and tears. It is now elevated to itself to dust rag extraordinaire. Dust rags do not get as much use in my house as they should…but i think a MDK tea towel sounds like such a great gift to me from me! Thanks
Mine is a souvenir of Marysville, Vic., Australia, from before a terrible bush fire destroyed much of the town and a dear friend escaped with his life.
One of our bathrooms is teeny-tiny with only room for one towel bar. But we squeezed in (squoze?) a handy plastic Command hook in a tiny wall space between the medicine cabinet and the door – which is just enough for a tea towel – but nothing fluffier. (It has donuts on it so we get hungry every time we dry our hands.)
What are those delicious looking almond treats? Yum! Does the tea towel come with patterns for the dishcloths (warsh rags for us Southerners?) Happy Holidays, ya’ll!
I buy beautifully coloured tea towels when the weaving guild has their biannual show and sale. They’re thick and I get them in stunning oranges and purples. Not colours in my kitchen, just colours that make me smile. But right now, the Christmas ones are in rotation – buffalo plaid with a moose silhouette or vintage red trucks with Christmas trees in the back.
I never knew how much I needed a tea towel until I read this. Now I know anytime is tea towel time! Off to the shop…
Ahhh…! Tea Towels… especially calendar ones… love them – each little piece of fabric with such a souvenir possibility…Use a permanent pen to mark memorable days as they happen!
Love this MDK idea with knitting suggestions!
In any case: do buy them thin (easy to wash, fast to dry = good energy saver)…
If possible stick with fastest to dry 100% linen – or a cotton/linen mix.
My favorites are the ball band dishcloths that I knit for myself. Luxurious yet practical. When I moved, I got rid of all of the non hand made ones.
I try to buy a tea/dish towel every time I travel, I have lots and they’re such nice souvenirs reminding me of each wonderful trip.
Hand painted flour sack cloth tea towels are my most favorite.
I had complaints about the number of tea towels we had and questions about why women give them to each other as gifts. I took a few of the less-loved but pretty, cut them in half and hemmed them to make napkins. That would never be the fate of this towel!
My Aunt Jeannie of blessed memory LOVED to get tea/dish towels as gifts. It became our Christmas tradition. She would have lovec this one.
My partner received calendar towels from his mother when he moved away from home. The earliest is around 1979 or 80. Most are in great shape but a little faded. I use them to dry lettuce. They are the reason I decided to learn to weave kitchen towels. Love them to pieces!
I have a pair of tea towels that my grandmother cross stitched. I’m 68, she lived to 94
I use them all the time in my kitchen. They bring wonderful memories. Great ideas for more tea towels. I love the souvenir suggestion. Light weight and useful. I also knit and crochet dish cloths and really like the idea of wrapping them in tea towels as gifts!
i have lots of tea-towels in the drawer (about 30 i think), some gifts from family, some i bought as souvenirs on my travels. all of them actually get used for drying dishes , or wrapping up a loaf made in the breadmaker or covering other baking such as my world famous shortbread or, at the moment, the 7 Christmas cakes on trays on the dining room floor which have just been marzipanned or iced and are awaiting either a further layer of goodness or to be boxed up and given away to family and friends.
my 3 favourites from the collection are
1). self portraits of YoungestD and her class mates at Primary (elementary) school 25 years ago.
2). wee GrandDaughter’s footprint taken at her nursery last year when she was about 18 months old and turned into a reindeer’s head with the addition of horns, eyes and a red nose (rubbish description of a charming thing)
3). just received this year, images of Christmas drawn by Big GrandDaughter (aged 6 and 3/4) at school which was used as the family Christmas card and printed on teatowels for the 2 grannies
Dishcloths absolutely are a thing! I knit stacks of them and take them into work for anyone to have. The hard part is convincing people that yes, you can actually USE them and throw them in the wash at the end of the week. They last YEARS and when they eventually wear out, I make more!
I love the collection of linen tea towels I inherited from my mother, and the ones I’ve bought as souvenirs, and the ones gifted to me. So absorbent and quick drying. And they last forever — hence inheriting them…. 🙂 Now who will I pass my collection on to when my time comes to go to the great tea room in the sky?
I love tea towels, and have a pretty neat collection of them, though mid-pandemic we had issues replenishing the supply. I used to prefer the cotton “flour sack” style cloth, preferably with something cute or something travelish on them. My family frequently send them to me from their travels. But mid pandemic, I bought a few packs of plain old white cotton tea towels, and then, when my husband started experimenting with dye techniques last summer, he dyed them all fantastic colors and patterns. When he decided to try dyeing linen instead of cotton, he went to the fabric store and got a few yards of linen and roughly cut and hemmed them in tea towel size and now I have even more fantastic colored tea towels.
As for uses, drying dishes and hands, wrapping around the handle of the cast iron skillet to protect ones hands when it gets hot, and sometimes using them for heating pads when removing things from the oven. But you can’t really set any hot pans on them, because they scorch. They’re ok for a quick use when handling a hot pan though. However, the best use in my house…. Wrapping a small, feline family member in a purrito when things like eye drops and oral meds are needed. They’re also great for cleaning paws when someone has walked through something messy. As small, feline family members tend to do sometimes. Sadly, the humble tea towel is of no effect when someone walks across the keyboard and now the computer thinks everything needs to be in some obscure dialect of Neanderthal pig latin, but still, it does everything else very well.
howdy – arrived here looking for new heels in sock knitting: very clear square heel tutorial; thanks!.
my favorite tea towel is from the Smithsonian Institutes — cartoonish drawings of the museums and some of the most popular exhibits. So charming & potentially educational! & anything remotely Provencial farmhouse-y graphics.