When we were planning our friend Lindsay’s bridal shower, we thought it would be fun to do some sort of a cute Cape Cod themed favor.  We found a vintagey looking map of Cape Cod when we were making her invitations that we kind of fell in love with due to our fondness for maps.  We decided that if we somehow printed the map on tea towels, it would make a perfect little shower favor.  And hopefully be something useful for people.  Colleen and her genius self took the image and put it into Photoshop, beautified it, and added text.  We then transferred the image onto the towels.  Colleen loves you guys and thought she would change the text for you since ya’ll most likely don’t know Lindsay and Ben (even though you should cause they are awesome).  She made a more universal Cape Cod image {free printable} in case any of you all wanted to use it to make your own Cape Cod towels.  

What you’ll need:

-Plain Tea Towels

-Iron-on transfer paper- Be aware that they usually come in paper for darker fabrics and paper for light to white fabrics.  Make sure to buy the correct one.  It is our opinion that this specific image would look better on a light to white towel.  But you just go ahead and do whatever your little heart desires.

-Iron

-Clean towel (beach or shower) for putting under tea towel when ironing.  I would go white on this if possible.

-Computer and printer for printing image on transfer paper

-Scissors

What you’ll do:

1) Print PDF image on your transfer paper making sure your paper is line side up when laying in the printer.  Colleen made 2 “I heart Cape Cod” images for you, one with white background for use with white or very light towels and one with transparent background in case you are printing on color. When you print the image out, it will be flipped on your paper like a mirror.  Now don’t let yourself get all upset about this. It has to be this way so that when you iron it on your towel, it will be facing the correct way.  Just trust us.

2) Use your scissors to round off edges of printed image while you heat up iron placed on no steam setting and turned up as hot as it can go.  If you don’t have a no steam setting, just dump all the water in your iron out.  The reason for rounding the edges is so the image lasts longer after washings.

3) Place your clean beach or shower towel down on a flat surface that is not your ironing board.   We don’t know why but that is what Martha said so we didn’t question her genius.   We ironed on Colleen’s counter.  Beware that the surface you choose is gonna get nice and toasty hot.  Lay your tea towel down front side up and place your printed (rounded edged) image down on the towel where you want it.

4) Iron for the appropriate amount of time constantly moving your iron around.  Our paper instructions said 180 seconds.  Just follow the directions on the paper package.  Let the towel cool.  It helps to move it from its ironing spot.  Remove the paper from the towel.  You will be able to tell if you haven’t ironed it enough because the paper will be very difficult to pull off the fabric and not separate from the image.  If you have ironed it enough, the paper will separate from the image without too much difficulty.

Here is an image of the free printable Colleen made you:

Free Printable Download

I Heart Cape Cod Image Transfer (white background)

Cute, right?  Isn’t she the best?  Let us know if ya’ll try this and have any questions.