Can we talk about tea towels?

[bod111]

I cannot believe I am asking this. This is a laughably luxury problem. I recently replaced my totally gross ancient tea towels with new ones following an attempt to lift the scummy slummy vibes in the kitchen. All my new tea towels - variety bought from different places, Habitat, local haberdasher, supermarkets have all shrunk to about half their original size within - like - about a month. Any advice much appreciated.

So, just to update, my ‘stunt’ tea towel collection currently comprises:

A Radical Tea Towel portrait of Virginia Woolf
A souvenir Tracey Emin from the current Tate Modern exhibition; my teen and I travelled from Yorkshire specifically to see this and it did not disappoint
A Grayson Perry from his exhibition about the pandemic from Manchester Art Gallery (a few years ago)
A vintage French linen with the obligatory red stripe
Lemn Sissay’s Superman was a Foundling from the Foundling Museum (I love Lemn Sissay and my kids are adopted).

Hilariously, my teen spotted my French Commune / Walter Crane tea towel, again from The Radical Tea Towel Company, and has snaffled it to pin on her wall. So this has now become a double-stunt tea towel. I am training her well as after the Tracey Emin exhibition, we went to the Tate Modern shop and she selected a couple of Jenny Holzer tea towels which she is planning to frame for her college room.

(In the interests of full transparency, I should probably declare that I also own stunt oven gloves…)

90 degree washes keep mine looking in good shape!

Tea towel drawer envy here.

It says they cannot be tumble dried which sadly rules them out for me 😥

Can I just complain about tea towels that don’t have hanging loops? 😡

Le Cordon Bleu tea towels are expensive but brilliant. I boil wash mine with no shrinkage at all.

Feel free, this is the thread for you! Personally, I don’t mind either way but I do hear you.

What a delightful thread!

I have questions though. I hardly use a tea towel as almost everything goes in the dishwasher. The one I have out barely needs changing from week to week as it doesn’t get touched. Do you all dry things a lot?

Also why the hot washes? If it’s only ever drying clean things it never gets very dirty surely? And even then wouldn’t 60 degrees suffice and prolong the length of the tea towels?

Exactly!

I still miss kitchen towels. Not tea towels but actual kitchen towels and the only place I ever find them now is in Greek supermarkets! So much better than a standard tea towel.

I prefer tea towels that are actually like proper mini towels . Hate those thin ones that shrivel up and are basically good for nothing in my opinion. Also fancy pretty ones that look nice but are the sort of material that doesn’t dry things .

I inherited a lot of tea towels from my DMs collection when she died. I now have a cupboard completely full of tea towels. I drip dry my dishes and therefore only really use tea towels a) to display on the front of the oven, in a classy sort of way obviously and b) to get hot dishes out of the oven.

But I've got a gorgeous collection! What can I do with them all? I'm particularly fond of some National Trust ones that are about thirty years old and still in good nick - in fact I think some of the houses they were bought from might have fallen down since!

Try this one: https://www.nisbets.co.uk/vogue-heavy-blue-tea-towel/

Frame them, @Vroomfondleswaistcoat?

The best ones, at least.

I love my tea towels.

I have collected them over many years-have royal wedding souvenirs and wonderfully naff ones from holidays, the awful ones my DC made and sold to me from school, quite a few jokey ones with sayings like "save water drink champagne" and themed ones from anywhere I visit-castles, NT houses etc-the more obscure the better.

People buy them for me as well-I saw my DS using my stunt tea towel from Brazil and was so aghast I could not speak.

John Lewis ones.

Not the largest of tea towels but they dry dishes brilliantly.

https://amzn.eu/d/0c93LLmd

I came to recommend these too. They are far superior to both smooth ones and waffle ones!

You are definitely my sort of person. I love your ‘displaying your tea towels on the front of the oven in a classy sort of way’.

I had a sort out a few years ago and banished all the kids' self portrait ones to the camping cupboard.
Since then, my kitchen has been a sanctuary of beautifully aesthetic tea towels.

And now thanks to this thread I’ve just dropped a ridiculous amount on a couple of linen ones from Fergusons Irish Linen Co.

Now, please settle a debate: Do we iron our tea towels?
I do. There is nothing more satisfying than pulling a crisp, bone-dry, perfectly flat towel from a neat pile. I’ve also heard that ironed tea towels actually dry the dishes better. My dsil thinks I'm mad though.
Tell me I'm not the only saddo who presses their tea towels..?

Tea towels must be ironed 🔨 (gavel)

I second John Lewis

I love this thread!

I have a passion for tea towels. I buy them when I go away tho it is getting harder. But I have one from Vienna with a recipe for doughnuts in Gothic German script, one from Paris that looks like it should be in a brasserie, one from Iceland (from DD, she went there) that is far too pretty to use, one from Tenby, one from the Lincs village I grew up in.

I also have an Elvis Costello one from a gig (we think he thought they said "shall we have a gig t…shirt?" and agreed), a London Underground one, one from the Bayeux Tapestry and one with a quote from Jane Austen (Radical Tea Towel I think). Oh and one from the British Museum with the Rosetta Stone on.

All of these I use apart from the Iceland one (too pretty) and the Rosetta Stone one (too fancy. And black).

None of them has shrunk that I know of. And yes I iron them. Then they fit in the drawer so so nicely.

@JustPlainStanfreyPock and @ThePieceHall your posts are my faves.

I bought some lovely waffle ones from Dunhelm in different shades of green and oh my word, they shrink. I did put them in the dryer after washing on 60. I find that they are quite stretchy though and I can make them longer and wider by pulling them once washed and dried.

Upthread we were asked what we uss tea towels for - mostly for drying my hands after washing off onions and garlic in my case. I get through two a day and have ironed piles of them in a store cupboard just off the kitchen. I'm not an ironing nut but they won't pile on each other if you don't. Having counted one pile, I reckon I have 70- 90 towels.

YY to the waffly shrinking ones.

I buy tea-towels as souvenirs and have loads from my dear late MIL - usually calendar ones from People's Friend. Just about every one is memorable to me.