Salad Tea Towel - Completed!

I finished my salad tea towel!  And here is my "surprise" hem trim...

Ruffles! A double row of ruffles:

I love the way this trim finished this towel.  The green ruffle reminds me of curly lettuce so it is perfect for this towel's theme :)

I am really happy with the fabric color match to my embroidery floss too:

I have really learned a lot making this ruffle trim.

I followed directions from a basic sewing book.  There were so many options for making and attaching ruffles!  I knew I wanted a double layer ruffle and I wanted to sew the double layers in the center so that both edges of each layer would be free and ruffled.

To make the ruffles, I cut a strip out of each of the fabrics I wanted to use for the ruffles.  Factoring in the seam allowance,  I cut the bottom ruffle 1/2" wider then the top ruffle.  As for the length, both strips are the same length, but to allow ruffling, the instructions said to cut 3 times the finished length!  This is for a fully gathered ruffle.

I finished the edges of both of the strips:

Then I machine stitched two lines of stitches on each strip using a basting stitch:

Then I carefully pulled the basting stitch threads, gathering up all the length on each ruffle.

I pinned everything in place and sewed through all the layers with one line of stitching centered on the top ruffle.

I turned the ruffle strip ends under and hand stitched them in place:

I also decided to embellish the other end of the tea towel.

I used one of the border patterns from the Salad Fixings embroidery pattern packet:

and stitched it up!

I love this tea towel and I really like the ruffles.  I want to make this again and I really want to try out the other ruffle variations.