Expert Guide: Embroidering Terry Cloth Towels Tutorial

Have you ever wondered to create stunning embroidered soft, plush terry cloth towels? If you’ve been hesitant to try, thinking it’s too challenging, or simply need a refresher, you’re in the right place!

We’ll fill you in on the secrets to achieving flawless embroidery on towels and other terry cloth materials. Why not change that every day item into a personalized masterpiece?

Embroidering a terry cloth towel is a good project for beginners. This type of fabric is fairly easy to work with because it doesn’t stretch and tear.

Plus, towels are flat, so they are easy to embroider without excess fabric getting in the way. And, finally, towels (especially tea towels) are pretty inexpensive. (Not to worry if you make a few mistakes).

Looking for high-quality embroidery fonts? Check out our embroidery fonts for over 1,000+ different choices of fonts for any occasion!

Learning how to machine embroidery on terry cloth allows you to create personalized gifts and clothing. You can add a name or monogram to a towel. This skill opens opportunities for personalization, who doesn’t love a personal touch to their items?

A monogrammed bath towel set is an inexpensive and thoughtful gift for a newly wed couple or house warming gift. What better way to celebrate their combined home and shared initial? Y

If you want to personalize towels for a couple you can choose a traditional monogram or a modern single initial.

For a traditional monogram, place the last name initial in the middle. Put the woman’s first name initial on the left side. Put the man’s initial on the right side.

The type of embroidery font you choose can make or break a project! Choose from over 1,000+ different font types to perfectly embellish your next project!

If you pick one letter for your monogram, there are many font choices and you can add a fancy border.

A fantastic present idea is to customize a matching set of robes with monograms. Once you’ve honed your skills in embroidering on a terry cloth towel, doing the same on a terry cloth robe is essentially the same.

You can use your embroidery machine to personalize a hooded bath towel, which makes a great gift for a baby! You can stitch many fun designs on the front of a hooded towel, such as a cartoon or name.

How cute is this ducky design? Save up to 90% off on our embroidery designs when you join our Embroidery Legacy Design Club. 

Need something for older kids? You can personalize a beach towel instead.

You can use your embroidery machine to add a special design or their name on the towel. This way, when at the beach or pool, everyone know’s whose towel belongs to who.

Looking for a fun and simple personalized gift for a host or hostess? Grab some hand or dish towels and embroider a festive design with the family’s name on them or a funny saying.

You can also embroider some tea towels to update your home! Adding some elegant, hilarious, and festive tea towel embroidery patterns can help brighten up any space.

Terry cloth items are great gifts for any occasion. Now you may be wondering what you should know before embroidering this fabric.

The main challenge you may face is positioning the embroidery design correctly on the towel or robe. You also need to ensure that it covers the textured fabric well. As terry cloth fabric has a thick texture, so the fibers may poke through your embroidery stitches.

For this reason, successful embroidery on towels begins with choosing an appropriate embroidery design. If you are stitching letters (such as a monogram) on a towel, choose a typeface with strokes that are not too thin. The surrounding nap of the terry cloth fabric will easily swallow up very thin letters.

When sewing a decorative embroidery design, it is best to use a well-digitized design. This design should have an important layer of stitching to secure the fabric fibers.

This should be done before adding the final layer of stitching. This will give you the best results. Designs digitized with this extra layer of underlay look more polished once they are stitched out.

This wreath embroidery design has been digitized thoughtfully. The leaf stitching covers the traveling stitches between the berries, eliminating the need to trim any jump stitches. Also, the underlay stitching underneath the leaves ensures thorough coverage.

Since this blog focuses on embroidering on towels, I won’t discuss digitizing on towels in detail. However, for more details, please refer to the article Embroidery Digitizing for Towels.

Make sure the embroidery design fits the towel you stitch on. Choose a size that works well with the towel.

Typically, a 4” x 4” design is an appropriate size for a hand towel.

Whether you hoop or float a towel will depend on the size of the towel and what the design is.

We always recommend using a water soluble stabilizer topper to prevent the stitches from sinking in. This topper goes on top of your towel and you should always lay the smooth side up.

Hooping your terry cloth:

If the design is extremely stitch intensive, you will want to hoop your towel to avoid any registration issues. We suggest using tear away wash-away stabilizer.

Hooping a towel (or any terry cloth material) can be difficult for beginners because of the thickness. If you force towels into the embroidery hoop it can distort and stretch the knap of the fibers.

Sometimes, hooping towels can be tricky, but have you ever tried Mighty Hoops? They’re magnetic hoops that make hooping almost anything (including terry cloth) easier!

Floating your terry cloth:

If your towel is small and the design isn’t intricately detailed, floating might be a better option.

Floating means that you hoop the stabilizer. After using an adhesive-backed tear away stabilizer, stick the towel to the hooped stabilizer.

Pictured above, is adhesive backed stabilizer hooped securely.

Adhesive-backed tear away is a great stabilizer when embroidering on towels. Hoop the stabilizer with the glossy side up. Score around the inside edge of the hoop with a pin to peel away the paper, exposing the sticky surface.

If you don’t have adhesive backed stabilizer, you can use regular tear away stabilizer and use temporary adhesive spray before stitching.

Here are a few placement guidelines you can follow:

• Center a monogram on a large bath towel about 8 inches up from the bottom edge of the towel.
• Center a monogram on a hand towel about 5 inches from the bottom edge if there is no decorative border. If your towel has a decorative border, ensure the bottom edge of the design is at least 1” from the border.

Want to learn more about hooping and design placement on terry cloth towels and garments? Be sure to watch our How To Embroider (Almost) Anything Series: Embroidering on Terry Cloth!

Once you finish stitching, remove the towel from the hoop and clean it up by trimming all your jump stitches.

Peel away the water-soluble topper from the front side of your towel and as much tear away stabilizer as possible from the back side of your towel. You can spray the front and the back of the towel with water to remove these more easily.

Congratulations! Now that you know how to embroider on a towel, the next step is to try it yourself! With our free Embroidery Legacy Design Kit, you can download our free Embroidery Legacy Design Kit that includes 11 designs (including the one shown above).

Thanks for reading, and if you enjoyed this article, don’t forget to comment below.