Embellished Hooded Towel Tutorial

I know it's a tad bit early to be talking about Christmas, but I just can't help thinking about it.  Since I have committed myself to handmade gifts this year, I need to do some serious planning in order to get all my gift giving accomplished.  So I thought you also might enjoy me sharing some holiday gift giving ideas a little earlier than normal.......perhaps you are going handmade as well!

The following tutorial was not entirely my own idea.  I had posed a question over on "The Cottage Mama" facebook fan page in regards to the projects everyone was working on and several women chimed in and said they were working on hooded towels for children.

Well, this little discussion reminded me that I had been wanting to make some giant sized hooded towels for my own girls.  I love the little baby hooded towels, but they seem to grow out of those so quickly.  And the larger sized towels that I see in some of the popular catalogs are just a little too pricey for me.

I think these would make a fabulous Christmas gift the younger people in your life.  You can be as creative as you would like with these and it's a great way to use a small amount of your beloved fabric stash (yes, I know there are others of you out there that are fabric hoarders like myself) to really make a statement on this one-of-a-kind towel.

Hooded Towel Tutorial

Supplies:
1 hand towel
1 large bath towel
1 strip of fabric (approx. 4" by 25")
Ric-rac trim (2 pieces - 25" long)
Thread
Scissors
Iron

Directions:

Cut hand towel to approximately 24" long.  If it is a little shorter or longer, that will be fine.  I just cut off the one end that looked a little different than the other.

Cut your strip of fabric 4" x 25" (allowing an extra inch longer than your hand towel).  If you used a different length for your hand towel, just add one inch for the fabric.  Pin your ric-rac (2 pieces also 25" long) along the raw edges of both sides of the right-side of the fabric strip.

Stitch in place.  I used different sized ric-rac for several different towels.  The one seen here is jumbo.  Base your seam allowance on the size trim you have.  You want the waves of the ric-rac poking through the other-side, so adjust accordingly.

Your best bet is to stitch straight down whatever size trim your are using.

With a hot iron, press the ric-rac to the other side.  Do this on both sides.

Press again with a hot iron to set in place.

Here is the fabric strip with the ric-rac sewn in place.  If you use smaller trim then your fabric strip will be wider because you will not have turned as much under.

Fold the hand towel in half (length-wise) and pin fabric strip approximately 1/2"-1" from the fold.

UNFOLD the towel and top-stitch down both sides to secure in place.

Above is the fabric strip sewn in place on the hand towel.

Now fold the hand towel the other direction - width-wise with right-sides together.  Stitch down the right and left sides.  Do not stitch the open end where you see the raw edges of the fabric.

Use approximately a 1/2" - 5/8" seam allowance.

Turn hand towel right-side out.

Take the corner of the hand towel that I am pointing to in the picture above and tuck it into the opposite corner.

Tuck the right corner inside the left corner.

Once you have tucked the one corner into the other, this is what your hand towel will look like.

Then open up your hand towel and now you have formed the hood.

You will notice after tucking the corners that you have one side that is a little longer than the other.  Fold this over and stitch into place in order to conceal the raw edges of the fabric.

I must have gotten too excited about nearing completion on this project because I didn't take a picture of the final step (sorry).  Pin the center of the hood to the center of the bath towel (right-sides together)......stitch into place using a 1" - 1.5" seam allowance (yes, a large seam allowance).  If you need to use a larger seam allowance because you can still see some of the extra hand towel, feel free to do so.....no harm done.

Here are four hooded towels for my two special little ladies!  I might applique their initials onto each towel in coordinating fabric.......I think that would be a lovely finishing touch.  I just need more hours in the day.......

For the towel above, I used a standard-sized ric-rac.  You could also omit the ric-rac altogether and just press your fabric under.  You could also trim the hood with coordinating ribbon as well.

Here you can see how the fabric strips end up being sized a little differently depending on the trim size used.  Again, no biggie.......exact measurements aren't really needed in this project

I wasn't planning on having my girls model these towels, but when they were outside with me taking pictures, they were begging to wear them........they looked so warm and cozy!

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.  Please let me know if you have any questions or if any of the directions need clarification.  Happy holiday gift making!  Stay tuned for more fun gift giving tutorials.  Anyone else planning a handmade holiday?

Cottage Mama's Note:  The fabrics used in this tutorial were Art Gallery "Paradise" (Double Ivory Bloom), Amy Butler "Love" (Sunspots Tangerine), Robert Kaufman "Sweet Tooth" (Camellia), Jennifer Paganelli "Flower Power"

Linking HERE.