Simple DIY Dish Towels

For my first project I decided to make some dish towels. This project gave me the opportunity to make some useful pieces for the kitchen and a way to try out different stitch patterns and experiment with contrasting thread colors. A quick note on the fabric, you want something that will actually soak up water or spills or dry your hands. When your picking out a fabric try to get something that you think will do that. My fabric was a slightly thicker knit cotton with nice light blue check pattern.

What you will need:
-2 yards of 55+ inch wide fabric. This will give you enough to make 9 18x24 dish towels. Obviously decide how many you would like to make and adjust you fabric accordingly. Some simple measuring will allow you to figure out how much fabric you need for how many you want to make. I made 6. 1 yard of fabric is great for 2-3 towels.

-Colorful thread. I used both navy thread and red thread as accent to the light blue pattern of the fabric.

-Sewing machine + pins


Steps:
1. Measure out your 18x24 rectangles and cut with a rotary cutter or fabric scissors.

2. Fold over 1/2 inch of the edge and pin.

3. Stitch a line or any other stitch patter you think is interesting. I did a straight stitch, curved zig-zag, and a blind hem pattern. Chosen purely because I thought they were interesting.

4. When you get to a corner, keep the needle in the fabric, lift up the presser foot, rotate the fabric, press the foot back down and continue stitching.

*5. Edit. Once you have gone once around, fold the edge over one more time so that your raw unfinished edge is on the inside and sew a simple straight stitch as close as you can to the edge. See the edit at the bottom of the page.

That is it! Enjoy your brand new dish towels and new sewing confidence!


~Andrew


EDIT:
After a few weeks of using them I noticed that the unfinished edge was starting to fray a bit. To address this I simply folded the edge over again and sewed a straight stitch as close to the edge as I could. (Step *5) This will at least put the fraying unfinished edge now inside the hem which should help its longevity. It does mean that the fun embellishment stitch I did on some of my towels is only visible from one side now, but that is okay, I still love them and have piece of mind that they will last longer.