Handling in the Towel

For my birthday and Christmas, my mom will sometimes buy me cute hand towels for the kitchen. Every once in a while she'll pick up a holiday-themed one with a homemade handle from a craft fair. I like these ones because they button/snap/velcro and will stay hooked to a handle and won't drop to the floor. My cousin's wife pinned this cute idea on Pinterest which was linked to this pattern. I printed out this pattern and went to work on my first handle for a towel.

The instructions were pretty easy to follow, but I made (and will make) a few changes to it as I went (go) along. The hardest part for me was doing the button hole. I don't have a button setting on my sewing machine, so I did the best I could. I think next time I'll hand sew a snap button, or just stitch some velcro on both sides. I will also make the "handle" part of the pattern a little bit wider. Here it goes:

Tools:

Sewing machine (unless you're real good at sewing)
Measuring tape
Scissors
Seam ripper (for mistakes - I had lots of- I'm still learning to use my machine)

Materials:

Hand towel (fold in half and cut down the middle to make 2 hanging towels)
Fabric for your hanging part (6 separate pieces of 7" by 12" fabric)
Thread
2 Buttons (or snaps or velcro)
Pattern
Card stock or paper to trace the pattern on to

I can't take credit for the pattern or the steps, so I'll just briefly share what I did. I started to put up our St. Patrick's Day decorations when I came across this towel. I figured it would be a good time to try out the pattern, so I cut the towel in half and found some old fabric lying around in my fabric box.

After I traced and cut, I had to layer 3 of the pieces. The first piece goes right-side up, the other two are right-side down. They are layered this way because you will sew them, then flip it right-side out.

Make sure to pin the pieces together so that they stay in place as you sew. Sew a 1/4 inch hem around all sides - just not the bottom.

Then I tucked the towel into the bottom. First, I sewed the towel/handle about 1 inch from the bottom of the handle. Then I put a little less than 1/4 inch hem around the sides. Then I added a final 1/4 inch hem at the bottom of the handle just to be secure.

Now, putting the hems was hard for me because the towel + handle was very thick. I had to rip out many hems because the thread kept gathering underneath the backside of the towel. I finally changed the setting for the one hem. If you notice, there are two different hems when sewing the towel to the hanger.

Then, the button hole came. I folded the loop part down to see where the button would go. Then I cut a slit. Around the slit, I tried to sew it together. It's not pretty, but it works. Like I said earlier, I might just sew a snap button on the next time I make one.