Hooded Towels

My kids love hooded towels and what can I say… I love how cute they look in them.  The only problem is that Taylor is tall(not sure where she gets that from) and all the kid friendly hooded towels barely reach her knees.  I want to be able to snuggle my girls up in a fluffy towel after their bath.  When a friend shared a post about making a hooded towel out of a regular size bath towel and hand towel I thought she was genius.  Only I stressed about what color fabric to use for the stripe to coordinate with the girls bathroom and then decided to make life simple and leave it off.  So here is my version of the hooded towels:

Hooded Towel Tutorial

Supplies:
1 hand towel
1 large bath towel
Thread
Scissors

Directions:

Start with a regular size bath towel and matching hand towel.  I like to use the quick drying ones from Target.  Target often runs them on sale for $4/$3 each and they work well for the kids.  Also make sure you take a hand towel with you to buy thread rather than guessing.  I didn’t so so well with my choice of purple.

  

Fold the towel with the right sides together and the short ends meet up.  Then stitch along the two outside edges.  I know you can’t see my stitching, but pretend you see straight stitches on the right and left side of the towel below.

 

Flip the 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.

I learned after creating my first batch, that the hood can gain a funky shape after washing so I decided to add a line of stitching along the back seam almost to the ‘point’ of the hood.  It gets a little tricky to get up in the hood, but it gives the hood a little more structure. 

To cut down on thickness to sew through, I cut off the finished bottom edge of the towel.  Then fold it up in the back and stitch into place in order to conceal the raw edges of the fabric.

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.

   

Once you finish it will look like this on the inside. 

 

Then you ask your kid to model it for you and get silly poses like this.

       

And then little sister begs you to hurry up and make her purple one.

 

This is the girls bathroom.  The hooded towels also work great because I decided to forgo traditional towel bars in their bathroom and added knobs for hooks instead. 

       

This project takes less than 30 minutes, even with kid interruptions, to complete and your kids will love it!