Sewing Tutorial: Easy Hooded Towel

At bath time we love hooded towels at our house. Cuddly and warm, and perfect for stopping Miss 4's long hair from dripping everywhere.

I picked up some fluffy thick towels on sale recently and thought that I would turn them into hooded towels either for my own kids, or as gifts. To brighten them up I ordered some ribbon online - colourful stripes and Hungry Caterpillar. Cute!

I used a regular sized bath towel and half a hand towel for one hooded towel. I made two at the same time though to make use of the whole hand towel. So I needed around a total of 4 metres of ribbon (measure the lengths of your two towels to be sure though - it is around 2.5cm wide, but even wider would be fine too), two bath towels and one hand towel to make two hooded towels.

First, I cut my hand towel in half, by folding short ends together.

Fold, right sides together, again short ends together. Pin along the raw edge and sew together. Finish off with a zig zag stitch.

Turn it out the right way and admire your hood! To decorate, you could pin ribbon on and sew like I did below. Tuck the ends under and sew along too.

 Pin some matching ribbon along the edges of your bath towel and sew on. I used a straight stitch, but you could experiment with others.

You will now have your two pieces - a hood and the main bath towel. Fold both in half in order to match them together.

When you have matched the centre lines of each, turn both over to the back and lay flat. Pin the hood over the top edge of the towel. Pin and then sew the two pieces together. To attach securely, sew along close to the bottom edge of the hood and then sew another line parallel, along the top of the edging.

And finished!

Just remember to clean out the lint from your sewing machine - sewing towels can leave a lot. Also beware of broken needles - sew slowly and carefully over thick seams.