Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Unpaper towels

A friend of mine has been wanting "unpaper" towels (essentially cloth towels to be used instead of paper towels) and I said that I would make them for her for the cost of the supplies. I had been wanting to try making some anyways and this was a good opportunity. She had located a tutorial by Sew A Straight Line so I used that and summarized my results here!



Cost: I bought all of my material at JoAnn fabrics with a 50% off coupon so in total I spent about $22 to make 15 wipes and the plastic holder.  I already had a snap pliers so I have not included that in the cost (I purchased mine from Amazon)

Time to complete: I probably spent about 5-6 hours on this, if you just serged the edges it would be much shorter but to turn and topstitch each one took a lot of time.

Difficulty: Intermediate, requires basic sewing skills.  I used a serger, but definitely not necessary.

Notes: Overall I thought these turned out really cute.  It was definitely a more time-consuming and costly project than I had expected so I have a new appreciation for the price of these on Etsy.  There are a few things that I would maybe do differently to make these a little bit better.  The first is that it might be a good idea to sew a + or X on them to tack the front to the back.  Based on my experience with cloth wipes this would keep the fabrics from shifting around during wash and use.  Also I think they would lay slightly more flat on the roll with three snaps on each side.  Neither of these changes are vital and I think as they stand they will work really well.  As the tutorial suggests, I think that using flannel and terry cloth will really be best for messy kitchen spills but the flannel will probably take a few washes to reach maximum absorbancy.  Overall a great tutorial and good outcome.

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