Machine Embroidery - Herb Kitchen Towels

Machine embroidered kitchen or bath towels make wonderful gifts or decor for your own home.  For the holidays this year, I made many of these towels with Herbs and Mason Jars on them.  

The patterns for these towels were purchased from Designs By Juju.  Look at the end of this post for direct links to the patterns.  Designs By Juju has several different packages of these designs to choose from.  They also run sales regularly so the design packs can be inexpensive if you find them on special.

INSTRUCTIONS For Machine Embroidery Kitchen Towels

PURCHASE blank TOWELs

The towels shown in the photo above were purchased from All About Blanks.  I like purchasing towels from them as they have quality towels for machine embroidery.

I also find nice towels at stores like Kohl's and Target.  At Kohl's I can get good deals on multipack towels when they have sales and then additional coupons.

PURchase Machine Embroidery designs

The machine embroidery designs on the towels are available from the Designs By Juju site.  The designs shown on the towels are Vintage Sketch Herb and Vintage Sketch Fall Mason Jars patterns.  

Designs By Juju has several packs of each of these patterns, so select the packs that have the herbs or mason jars you would like to machine embroider.  Each pack comes with multiple patterns to choose from.

Keep an eye out for sales!  Designs By JuJu has wonderful sales.  For example, as I write this, the sale is 6 packs for $12, 10 for $15 or 16 for $20, so that is a huge discount!  They have these sales regularly, so if you need to, wait for a sale.  

Be sure to purchase the correct type of files needed for your embroidery machine.  If you need help downloading and copying the pattern to your USB stick, please click the links to view our video tutorials.

Hoop Towels and Embroider

Once you have the designs loaded on your embroidery machine, hoop the towel and then embroider it.  These embroidery designs are "sketch" designs so they are not dense patterns.  This means they stitch up quickly which makes them perfect designs for gifts. 

If you need help on how to machine embroider on a towel, follow the link for our video tutorial.  If your towels are fluffy, be sure to use a wash away stabilizer on the top of the towel.  On the back, use a tear-away stabilizer.

Be aware that the towel design and color will show through these designs since they are not dense patterns.  In the towels below, the design on the brown towel does not show up as well as the other towels.

Keep this in mind when picking out towels to embroider on and the thread colors selected for the embroidery.  I thought the lighter colored towels even with the checked pattern turned out nicely and the embroidery design showed up better.

Finishing the Towels

After the towels are embroidered, be sure to trim any jump stitches on the front of the towel.  Also, trim all of the threads on the back of the towel to clean it up.

To make the towels into hanging towels like the ones shown in the photo, visit or tutorial, Hanging Hand Towel with Kam Snaps.  This tutorial will show you how to make the towel into a hanging towel by just adding a couple of snaps.

Another option for making the towel into a hanging towel is to add a machine embroidered towel topper.  Click the link to find information on adding this type of topper to the towels.

A potholder dish towel is another option for making these towels into a hanging towel.  Click to see the tutorial and how easy it is to sew.

Finally, before using or gifting the towels, put them through a wash cycle in order to remove the wash away stabilizer.  

Other Kitchen Towel Projects:

• Turn any towel into a Hanging Kitchen Towel with Kam Snaps
• Make yourself some Un-paper Towels from old bath towels.
• This super simple Hanging Potholder Dish Towel takes a store purchased towel and a potholder to make a hanging dish towel.
• Make a Hanging Kitchen Towel with our free towel topper pattern and tutorial. 
• Embellish a store purchased towel by adding a fabric border to the towel.
• Holiday Crocheted Dish Towels - Free patterns for snowman, santa and gingerbread man can be crocheted to make super cute towels.