Anyway, this month one of my very bestest friends, Bird, is having a birthday party for her darling 1 year old. Poor Birdlet has been the unfortunate recipient of many of my attempts at baby clothes and also the very first quilt I ever made. So keeping the tradition alive of pawning off my crafts on her I decided to make a hooded towel.
There are a ton of tutorials for this on Pinterest. I read a bunch, attempted one, failed horribly, tweaked the directions and ended up with an awesome towel! So here's how I did mine!
I started with one towel and one hand towel. Versions 1.0 and 2.0 respectively.
With 1.0, I shortened the hand towel to the suggested length.
However, this left one ginormous end (like the far right edge) that down the line, my machine could NOT get through. It caused much screaming and frustation. It also made the design on the hood slightly unappealing to the eye which I'll point out later.
On 2.0 I shortened the hand towel only in that I cut both bulky edges off. This made it a breeze to sew later and the hood a bit larger than 1.0.
After this fold it in half so the cut edges are together. Turn it 90 degrees and sew down the two short sides.
This will leave the longest side (the cut sides) open:
Next, put your left hand inside the opening and grab the top right corner. Poke the corner in so your left hand can grab it.
Take that top right corner and nestle it up against the inside top left corner. You'll end up with this:
Pull the bottom right corner, where my hand is, open and your hood will start to form.
(see how one half has that decorative line and one doesn't? That. drove. me. insane. I opted for a different type of towel for 2.0 for that reason. It might have turned out more symmetrical if I hadn't cut the other side so much that the same decoration is actually at the very bottom of the other half. Also, bulky towel edge. GRRRRRAAAHHHHH)
Arrange it to your liking.
This next step is important, do it immediately!
Put it on your head. :D And then send everyone you know pictures of yourself wearing ridiculous, toddler sized, KKK-esque, towel hood. Seriously though, it's almost impossible to resist the urge to put this thing on your head at this point. It's actually really warm, I can see why kids love it.
Okay. That's the hard part, now it's easy. At this point your hood still has an unsewn opening down at the bottom. The next step in a lot of tutorials is to just sew the hood as is to the towel. I was completely unable to do this. The design of the hood makes the two edges very uneven. I sewed it as is and then had to rip it. I missed sections of the second edge so it left gaping holes.
So I threw an extra step in there and sewed the hood closed. This is also where it is a god send to cut off those huge towel edges. It will make the hood a tiny bit bunchy but I think that just adds to the coziness.
Now, sew it to the very middle of your towel. I was so enraged at my machine not sewing through bulky towel on version 1.0 that I just sewed it on and didn't bother to check or pin. I just wanted it done. As expected, it's laughably off center. I was much more careful with 2.0 and pinned very thoroughly.
I sewed it just one on top of the other. I did NOT do right side to right side. I wanted to try and keep the seam as minimal as possible. After I sewed this I reinforced it with an additional zig zag stitch. The towel is heavy and puts a lot of strain on this seam.
YOU'RE DONE! Good job!!
Now put it on again!
An optional step is to add some embellishments. I wanted to do a decrative edge stitch on the large towel but my stitches were so small compared to the wide edging on the towel. I decided to attempt a monogram instead. It turned out okay, not great.
Then I laid it out. Folded the large towel up in half and then up in half again. Then I rolled the edges in and tied some scrap fabric from the Birdlet's quilt around it and now I'm party ready!
I can't wait to see how she looks in this thing. She's only a year old so I think she'll be swimming (hahaha) in it and I expect it to be ADORABLE! Hopefully Bird will let me post some after pics.
What do you guys think? Pretty easy craft? It seems more complicated that it actually is. On version 2.0 I think I spent, at most, an hour. Let me know how yours turn out.
Thanks for reading! Happy Holidays!!!
~Pockets
