— “Dish Towel are great for expressing who you are and personalizing the cotton bread basket ,” Sanchez says. “They’re inexpensive, too.”
Bambi Sanchez of Lake Lotawana, Mo., uses hers for anything from drying glasses to wiping off the muddy paws of her boxer, Sadie, and peekapoo, Simon. Dish towels also are unofficial tools in her first-aid kit.

Inspired by her mother-in-law’s collection of fine dish towels, EllynAnne Geisel of Pueblo, Colo., wrote “The Kitchen Linens Book” (Andrews McMeel, $20), available in March. An envelope attached in the back of the book includes Butterick transfer patterns from 1945 of dancing veggies and kitchen utensils that can be used for dish towels.

Geisel admires how women of generations past made the humble cleaning utensils so pretty by artfully stitching motifs and trimming them with tatted lace. She’s bought other vintage dish towels at estate sales and thrift stores, treasuring them by using them as napkins and table runners and displaying them in a glass-front cabinet.

Using her trusty embroidery sewing machine, Sanchez embellishes dish towels as gifts. She designs traditional monograms for couples, chef patterns for cooks and equestrian motifs for her own home.

Sanchez uses the classic white flour sack towels, starting at $2.95 a piece, from Pryde’s Old Westport in Kansas City. The kitchen store receives a new shipment of dish towels every two weeks, says owner Louise Meyers, because they’re so popular.

“She’d come in each season and buy six new ones because she loved them so much — she even made curtains out of them,” Meyers says. “What I’ve done with my towels is rolled them into a 2-gallon olive jar on a pedestal next to the kitchen sink. Not only do they look pretty, but then they’re right there if I need one. I often use them instead of bibs.”