Millie's Tea Towels, Hand Embroidered: Sun Bonnet Days Collection (9 to choose from)

Call them what you like: dish towel, tea towel, or, in the dialect of my Italian grandparents, a mappine ... good cooks need an abundance of towels in the kitchen. My mom, Millie, figures they should be beautiful, and why not? She embroiders each of these by hand. It takes her about a day to finish each one, but she loves the process. The full amount of each sale goes to her, and when I am 94 years old, I hope that I, too, will be coming up with new cottage industries, as Mom did, to keep myself busy. Now Mom is 98, and still enjoying this newly found purpose in life. Mom does each stitch by hand with needle and thread, and once the embroidery is done, she and my sister Marietta launder the towels and iron them, so they are ready to use once you receive them. They are big and thirsty: 100% flour sack cotton, and just about 28" square once they've had that initial wash & dry. The towels themselves are loomed in Pakistan, but the hand embroidery is done by Mom at the old family homes