Hooded Towels

 

I have been wanting to make up a few hooded towels for my kiddos.  I searched Blogland and found some really great tutorials.  I chose elements of my two favorite tutorials and combined them to make exactly what I was looking for.  I used Andrea’s tutorial on The Train to Crazy and Lindsay’s tutorial on  The Cottage Home.

Materials:

1 large bath towel

1 hand towel

Coordinating strip of fabric “4 x 25 “

Ric-rac (optional)

Coordinating thread

sewing machine, scissors, etc. 

Rotary Cutter and Cutting Mat or Scissors

 

Tutorial:

 

Take your hand towel and cut the trim off of one end and about 3” off of the other end.  Your towel should be 24” long.

 

Now fold the towel in half and cut it to a width of 11”.

 

Find something round like a plate and use it to cut a curve on the top folded edge of the towel. Important: Make sure that you are not cutting the curve on the side with the finished edge.  This finished edge will be the edging of the hood.

 

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With right sides together, sew from the curved edge to the bottom of the hood piece.

Now we are going to attach the hood to the beach towel using a French Seam.  This awesome idea comes from Andrea’s tutorial on The Train to Crazy.  I love it because you won’t have an unfinished seam were the hood is sewn to the towel.  With wrong sides facing, lay the hood piece on the center of one of the long edges of the beach towel.

The raw edge of the hood piece should be just below the edge of the beach towel.  Pin the hood in place.

Sew using a 1/4” seam allowance.

 

Flip the towel over so that the right sides of the beach towel and the hood are now facing up.

Top stitch close to the edge of the beach towel and you’re done!  Wasn’t that easy?

 

Look at those nice finished seams.

 

Now if you want to get fancy, you can also use Lindsay’s idea from The Cottage Home and add some cute coordinating fabric.

 

Cut a strip of fabric 24”x 5”.  Sew a piece of ric-rac to each long edge and press edges under.  For the boys’ towel, I skipped the ric-rac and just folded the long edges under about 1/4”.

 

Lay your cut hood piece out flat and pin the strip of fabric close to the finished edge.

 

Sew the fabric strip to the hood piece.

 

I wanted to give the boys’ piece a little more pizzas so I used a contrasting thread and sewed with a decorative stitch.

Now complete your hood and attach it to the beach towel in the same manner described above.

Happy Sewing!