My family just made a big move from Virginia to Utah, which is back to what I know and where I grew up. It's definitely refreshing. But moving to a new home can be stressful, with boxes to unpack, a yard to care for (a totally new concept for us), and an unfamiliar neighborhood to come to know.

It takes awhile to get into your normal groove and feel comfortable. And let's be honest - I am hoping that in two years I'll all of my pictures hung on the wall!

But one thing is for sure - clearing out all of your stuff and starting anew allows you to look at things from a different perspective and make a few changes by way of decor. Adding a pop of color here and there can go a long way in brightening up your room. And why not create a pop of color that's not only attractive to look at but also has a function? Here we go with the Ruffled Kitchen Towel.

As a side note, not all of my articles are going to involve sewing or any other complicated skills. I'm more of a simplified glue gun type of girl. I wanted to keep these "Small and Simple" tutorials just as they suggest - small and simple.

What you'll need:
White kitchen towel
6 fabric strips - 3" x 2x width of towel
Sewing machine with white thread
Needle

1. You'll want to start off by clean finishing all of the edges of your fabric strips. If you have a serger, go ahead and use that for this step. I don't have a serger, so I just did a zig-zag stitch as close to the edge of the fabric as I could make it.

2. Once you have done the clean finish on all of the edges, go ahead and fold over one of the long sides of each strip and stitch a straight stitch. This will be the bottom edge of the ruffle and will show, so you want it to look nicely finished. You can stitch the short sides of each strip as well.

3. Now for the ruffles! There are lots of different ways to create a ruffle. I recently discovered that you can just gather and sew the strip into a ruffle as you sew it onto the towel. So simple!

I like the look of the diagonal ruffle, so I just made sure to pin 4 pins to hold my fabric strip in place so I could sew the ruffle that way. Just work one ruffle at a time, overlapping the ruffles by about ¼"so you don't see the towel underneath.

4. Once your ruffles are all sewn on, you're ready to embellish. I had an extra large vintage button that happened to match some of my fabric. I just took the last ruffle and hand sewed it into a circle, then sewed the button on top.