dish drying mat

Ok, so ever since seeing THIS over at Andrea's blog, I've been literally antsy to make one of these. Our last apartment lacked a dishwasher, and although I hated the idea of washing everything by hand, it turned into a pretty therapeutic chore for me. Plus, dishwasher or not, there's always that favorite bowl or giant pan or just the small things that are simpler to wash by hand than try to locate after a round in the machine.

So since I had my machine out to hem those stupid long curtains, I decided to wing it and make a couple dish drying mats. The choice of fabrics was easy since I've been on a sick robin's egg blue kick lately, and the amy butler fabric was actually used to make the coasters I use every morning for my tea. Matchy matchy I guess.

I really went with whatever on the measurements depending on the cut of fabric I had, so one is much larger than the other. It's just a rectangle though, nothing difficult about it. I tend to hate HATE hate having to measure and cut. I think it's the rebellious spirit in me.

I used an old towel that the husband accidentally ripped through with his massive muscles. Eh, it happens. Cutting through it was an absolute nightmare to clean up after. I'm pretty sure I'll be picking up little tiny terry cloth pills for the next two months, but I digress. My main tweak to the idea was to add the ribbon so I could just roll and tie to store. See:

{On a side note, these would make great housewarming gifts.}