The search for the perfect kitchen towel...

I have long had a bit of a personal grudge about dishtowels. It seems that there is an unwritten law in the universe that the cute dishtowels are not allowed to work well, and the ones that work well aren't allowed to be cute.

What do I mean by "work well"? Well for one thing they need to be absorbent and not just smear water around on the dishes. They also need to come out of the laundry intact; the design should not have faded into a wispy shadow of its former self, and the edges should still be at the edges (rather than curled up into a permanently-creased wad.) Many times I have sent a cute and youthful dishtowel on its first voyage through the laundry only to see it come out looking like a haggard old delinquent - faded and rumpled.

The life of a dishtowel in my kitchen is quite tough.

I have better things to do than coddle my linens. Only the strong survive. But that seemed to leave me with a collection of sturdy but boring (or downright unattractive) towels.

I wanted fun dishtowels - cute dishtowels - splashy dishtowels - the kind you want to display in the kitchen. But I also wanted people to be able to dry their hands on them. And dry dishes with them. And use them as impromptu hotpads. Is this too much to ask??? Apparently so.

And thus I began my quest. Early experimentation with production samples yielded results that combined all of my worst pet hates. The early versions didn't absorb water. They shrank drastically in the wash. The design instantly faded into dowdiness. The edges rolled up like a party horn, never to be seen again.

I decided that what I clearly needed was the same sturdy effectiveness you find in cloth diapers.

If you think about it, it stands to reason that diapers are engineered to be SOFT and ABSORBENT - the same two qualities necessary in the perfect dishtowel! I realized I needed to find someone who would produce my designs on a birdseye weave cotton. And eventually I did!

The fabric for these towels is specially woven for me in India, a country known for its gorgeous cotton. And the vivid, cheerful color of the designs last fabulously through multiple washings. Of course they fade a bit as time wears on, but they age very gracefully and don't look hideous and old after their first wash. And the edges stay put!