Hanging Hand Towels

My daughter, Ann Marie, is one of those creative people we all envy.  She’s got that artist’s eye, and she loves to decorate her house, inside and out.  She’ll roll up her shirt sleeves, get paint on her hands and dirt under her nails, and the end result is something that makes me think “I wish I could do that!”

Today, I’m sharing her blog on how to make hanging hand towels.  If you’ve ever had one, you know how clever they are.  Practical, invaluable–and cute!  I made a half dozen of these as gifts for Christmas, and I can attest to how easy they are to make.  Anyone who cooks wipes their hands ALOT.  These hand towels are just what you need! 

Is it just me, or when you have kids over the age of, say, one, do the hand towels in the house have a tendency to vanish into thin air (or at least migrate as far as possible from the towel rack)?  At our house we developed a major problem with hand towels ending up on the floor. . .

. . . or as doll blankets. . .

. . .or as Batman capes.

I love seeing my kids use their imaginations, but sometimes a girl just wants dry hands!

Well, many years ago my grandmother made us these handy (ha, excuse the pun) little stay-put hand towels for Christmas.  The one I had was used and washed and used and washed into oblivion, so when the hand towel situation got out of hand (ha ha, I’m just full of them today), I knew I had to make some more.  Really, they’re so cute and easy to sew, it’s hard not to get carried away, especially when you find some really cute towels, like this set I found at HomeGoods.

All you need to make your own is a hand towel, a coordinating square hot pad like one of these,

a button that will fit through the loop of the hot pad, and some very basic sewing skills.

Here’s what you do.

Find the middle of the towel length-wise.  I marked the edges with a pin but otherwise just eye-balled it. The stripes made it easy to follow a straight line.

Baste 2 parallel sets of stitches across the middle, with each set of stitches about 1/8 inch apart.

Pull the threads at the end to gather the towel .

Find the middle of the hot pad, and line it up with the middle of the towel, right sides together.  Adjust the gathers to make the middle of the towel equal in width to the hot pad. Pin.

Sew the middles together, going over it twice to make it extra sturdy.

Finally, find a button that will fit nicely through the loop of the hot pad and sew it on the side opposite of the loop (so they meet).

And there you go!  It’s that simple.  Isn’t it cute?

It’s so nice to be able to count on a hand towel to be there when you need it (honestly, it doesn’t take much to please me.)

A set of these make a great handmade gift for someone.

So do you have a favorite handmade gift?  How do you keep hand towels handy when kids are in the mix?