more on the towel and a link

Elizabeth asked for a little more info on the hooded towels that I made. So, just as a reminder, I mostly followed the tutorial over at the Microbes of Unusual Sizes blog. I started to just make a few notes about my changes, but it was sounding confusing to me. So...I'm just going to list out my changes to her steps. What I have written may be completely confusing. If so, let me know. I think this would be much clearer if I just wrote my own tutorial. However, I would need to make another towel so that I could have pictures at every step.

1. Measure 10.5 or 11 inches instead of 10 inches. I wasn't so sure about my ability to finish the inside edge of the hood, so I wanted to allow a little extra room. Plus, I was making my hood curved. I don't think it makes much difference either way.

5. I used a zigzag stitch about 1/2 inch from the edge. After thinking about it, I think it would be just fine to do it closer as she suggests. I was just nervous about this edge finishing thing - I had never tried it. After I when down the entire length, I found something round and created a curve at the top edge (again with the zigzag stitch) and then cut off the extra fabric.


6. I finished the edge with a very close zigzag stitch. It didn't look quite like hers, but looks pretty good.

7. & 8. I aligned the middle of my hood and towel, but I attached the hood on the outside of the towel so that the hood binding was on top of the towel binding. If you look at her finished product, you can see that the way she attached it caused the towel to turn in funny and have a seam on the inside where the kid is. I think you can tell in this picture and the one following how I lined it up (you may want to click on them and look at the larger pictures). It causes the towel to hang straight and there is no seam to bother the kid.


9. I would recommend pinning the hood and the towel together in several places if you want it perfectly aligned. I didn't. They're all slightly off center, but it doesn't bother me too much. Anyway, I used a small but tight zigzag stitch on top of the binding. The only problem I had was with the very edge where the end binding (either pink or blue in the pictures) was on top of the towel binding (white). It was a little thick for my sewing machine so I hand sewed that part down on Caroline's towel. However, on Nathan's I forced the thickness into my sewing machine and stitched it down separately from the long line.


11. I added the letters to the bottom in a coordinating terry fabric. Again, I used a zigzag stitch (larger) around the edge and then trimmed up the stray strings.






Elizabeth also asked for the instructions for the crayon roll. I found them over at Skip To My Lou. I pretty much followed it exactly except that I didn't use the ric rac - not for a boy! I also didn't use interfacing since I used denim.