I love sewing projects that solve a problem. On the boat I like to hang my galley linens (tea towels and dish cloths) over the oven door handle. They are completely accessible while I’m working in the galley and it maximizes the space. I don’t need to lean and stretch to reach them, or hang up hooks, making the galley space smaller than it already is. The only downside I’ve found by hanging them over the oven door handle is sometimes they fall off. On the boat I don’t have an endless supply of clean linen, so when the tea towel falls on the floor I cringe.
I’ve lightly searched in the past for ideas of how to solve my galley problem, but had only ever found the super crafty knitted hanging tea towels that really don’t suit my style, or additional hooks to take up wall space. I walked past cheap tea towels at Ikea this spring and decided this was the year to get rid of my annoying problem. With some dedicated time browsing the internet, I found a clean simple way to hang towels with buttons. Super simple, no extra fabric, no loops to get caught in things or get in the way, just a nice clean design minimizing the functional impact!
Pulling out the sewing machine and my jar of buttons, it wasn’t too long before I had whipped up my new galley boat linens. No more gross falling on the floor!
Placing the button hole is really a personal preference, I went with about 1/3 of the way down to give ease of use for taking on and off the oven door handle.
I really liked how the tea towels turned out, I find them easy to access, and with this design, I can buy any tea towel and just add a button. I have two handles, one on the oven door and one just outside, giving two options for hanging them.
On the dish cloth I ended up sewing the button about 2/3’s of the way down the fabric. I also went with hanging them on an angle thinking it may be better for both drying and accessability.
I have no complaints for how the dish cloth turned out, but I wanted to try an alternate way to hang them. After some more searching the internet I stumbled on the super easy no sewing required option. A quick trip to the dollar store and some leftover ribbon, voila, hanging dish cloth.
While I liked the button on the dish cloth, my favourite for now is a button on the tea towel and a simple clip for the dish cloth. I might even hang another clip as an alternate option for the tea towel.
After countless tea towels and dish cloths falling on the floor, my galley problem is now gone! Utilizing existing space, I have both a clean galley and clean boat linens ; )
Happy boat sewing!