Autumn Applique Dish Towel

So one of my friends gave me this awesome book full of applique projects and I have finally gotten around to completing one of them. This is a fall dish towel. Applique took a long time for me to learn, but I'm getting better at it and my machine is just so easy to use. All it takes to make this project is a few fat quarters in some different fall colors and some off-white cotton.

First, I cut the off-white cotton fabric a little larger than one of my dishtowels. Then I hemmed the sides.

Next, I went online and searched for line drawings of fall leaves. I cut and pasted them into a word document and resized them to fit my project. I printed out a bunch of different shapes and sizes.

Then I cut out the paper leaves, traced them on my printed fall fabrics, and cut them out of fabric.

Next I placed a leaf on a brown square and appliqued it on. There are lots of different methods for doing applique on a machine. My machine came with a foot that works well for applique. I just lower the feed dog and I can move the fabric freely beneath the needle. I don't have quite a steady enough hand for this yet, so I just used my standard foot and did a lot of stopping and turning the fabric so that my fabric didn't start getting all bunchy.

Next, I appliqued the brown square onto the dishtowel and added another leaf for good measure.

To make the ruffle, I folded a strip of printed fabric about 3 inches wide in half the "hot dog" way with the right side out. I ironed it so it would stay flat. Then I sewed a long running stitch across the open end (not the folded end). I pulled the bobbin thread to gather it.

I pinned the ruffle onto the bottom of the dishtowel and just sewed it on. I liked the fraying of the fabric here--it seemed to give it that folksy-homemade-rustic-autumn look that I was looking for.