Why don’t they make these any more?

The same towel in three colorways: dark red, bright green, and bright red. On top of my favorite turquoise Wilendur dogwood-blossom tablecloth!

Last weekend I picked up four vintage printed kitchen towels at a great antique shop in Ilion, New York.

It’s the colors that got me, of course!

The floral print is pretty.

This is half the towel. The other half has the same motif.

Though the long edges were raveled a bit, the towels didn’t show any wear or stains. They looked new, actually.

Then I looked closer at the raveled edges.

Cut on the dotted line!

Well, well, well! Looks to me like these were sew-it-yourself towels that the original owner never finished.

The selvedges (the finished woven edges) of the fabric are on the towels’ short ends. The long ends all have those red cut-on-this-line dashes. So the printed fabric was about 19 inches wide—perfect for a kitchen towel.

Maybe you could buy a bunch of towel panels off the bolt at Woolworth’s? You could cut them apart and hem the edges, and you’d have nice new kitchen towels.

Why, o why is nobody making manufacturing these anymore?!

Other than the fact that most people just can’t be bothered to sew, that is. (You vintage lovers would do it in a heartbeat, wouldn’t you?)

To finish my towels, I pulled threads on  the raveled edges until the grain line was straight.

Then I trimmed the resulting “fringe” close to the edge.

Press under the side hem twice to enclose the raw edge, and stitch it down.

I used my trusty old Elna 5000, broken bobbin-door latch and all.

One more quick pressing, and presto!

New old towels!

I won’t be keeping them, though. They’re in the pile for the next month’s Vintage Bazaar.