Stamped Flour Sack Tea Towels

Making your own stamped flour sack tea towels is such a fun and easy craft. If you have little ones, this is a very kid-friendly art activity they can enjoy doing with you. These towels also make fantastic gifts for friends and family!

I love the look of those vintage, farmhouse-vibe tea towels, and while I have plenty in my home already, there’s always room for more! Especially homemade ones. While perusing the craft store the other day, I picked up some cute flower stamps. Spring is right around the corner, so I couldn’t resist! Then the idea to make my own stamped flour sack tea towels popped into my head. I grabbed some plain flour sack towels (I got mine at JoAnn’s but you can get them WAY cheaper online) and black matte fabric paint, then headed home to make this easy and fun DIY project.

I did wash, dry, and iron my towels before doing this project in order to pre-shrink them. Ironing the towels helped create a flat surface for stamping. I’m not much of an ironer unless I’m ironing fabric to sew a quilt but in this case it was really worth it!

To make these stamped flour sack tea towels, you’ll need:

• Flour sack towels (washed, dried, and ironed)
• Fabric paint (I used this paint in black)
• Paint brush or sponge
• Stamps (I went with a mix of flowers and leaves)

Once you’ve got your materials ready, lay out cardboard or something under the towel to protect the surface you’re working on. I didn’t have any paint bleed through, so this is just a precaution, but I figured better safe than sorry.

I also used a piece of cardboard as a “paint palette.”

Once I laid the tea towel over the cardboard, I plotted out where I would stamp the designs. I applied a light layer of paint to the stamp and used even but firm pressure to apply the paint to the flour sack towel. This part can take some getting used to. Mine definitely didn’t all look as perfect as the one below, but it adds to the rustic, handmade feel of the project.

Keep on stamping your flour sack towels until you’ve achieved the look you want. You may find it helpful to wash the stamp off occasionally. When I felt the paint was building up too much, I just rinsed the paint off with water in the kitchen sink. Then I dried the stamp and applied another light layer of paint and kept on stampin’!

Let your stamped flour sack tea towels dry overnight. Some fabric paint requires heat to set the paint, so check what your paint says to do. The fabric paint I used didn’t specify but I decided to iron the towels again just to ensure the paint set. I placed another tea towel on top of the stamped flour sack tea towel and then ironed. Then I repeated the process with the other stamped towel. Now they are able to be washed and dried without the design coming off!

And voila! Beautiful, homemade stamped flour sack tea towels. Let me know if you make this easy and fun DIY project!