hey crafty friends this is jenny from
crafttestdummies.com and today i'm going
to talk to you about how to make
reusable flannel towels to swap out
single-use paper towels
in your kitchen or bathroom we're going
to go over
materials sizes how to finish the edges
and even how to display them in your
home
let's take a look
so let's take a look this is a
commercially purchased
uh unpaper towel or non-paper towel and
really what it is
is a length of flannel that has been
serged with an
overlock stitch and this is just a
normal thread this isn't um
fuzzy polyester and from what i measured
the purchased one is about
10 and 7 8 this way by about
nine and a half um so i use these in the
kitchen they've
worked great uh and we use them for hand
towels wiping up spills on the counter
um almost anything you'd use a paper
towel for except for like really messy
things yeah i don't want to like soak up
bacon grease with this
but it was a reasonable replacement so
i went ahead and i made my own and this
is what i'm going to show you today
these are a little bit bigger these are
actually um just over 11 inches
by nine and a half inches just because
the way i cut my yardage but i'll get
into that too
i also used a serger overlock stitch
this one actually i used like the fuzzy
polyester to give it more of an
encapsulated look
now you can do this with your home
machine the difference
is uh how much coverage you're going to
get
but the idea of doing some kind of an
overlock stitch or a zigzag stitch
is going to keep all of this from
fraying which is going to be great
because
you're going to want to wash these
frequently in hot water and we don't
want them
you know falling apart on us so um again
you can make some adjustments with your
home machine
as i mentioned these are a little bit
bigger and
i'll tell ya i think mine actually look
nicer
i'm just gonna brag on myself for a
minute i think mine look better and
you can buy all kinds of cute flannel
prints now here's one that i did
that had uh the overlock stitch
but with just a single versus a double
needle this is what i did
on a home machine these have a tendency
to curl up a little bit but i'm not mad
at it
and like i said look at all the cute
prints that you can buy to customize for
the
season or for your kitchen so next thing
is let's take a look at the cutting
diagram so here i just graphed out for
you
a piece of fabric that would be
let me do it this way 44 inches across
by 36 inches um wide because that's
usually what commercial
fabrics that you can get like a joann
fabric or hancock or whatever
and i actually grade out the one inch on
each edge
for the selvage now you can use that
depending on your fabric sometimes it's
printed all the way to the edge
sometimes it has those little dots and
you don't want that necessarily on your
finished project
because these are towels i don't really
think it matters but i just cut it out
so that you could see
that if you took the remainder of your
fabric and you measured 10 inches
wide by 12 inches long you can get
a dozen of these towels out of one yard
of fabric
and have a little bit left over and i
can show you what to do with these
two to three inches at the end
so when you get your fabric the other
thing you can do is cut off the selvages
and then just fold it in half and in
half again which is kind of what i've
done here
and see here this is the one selvage
that you could use
here's the selvage that you don't want
to use
so you would just fold this
in a way now this is flannel so it's a
little on the sticky side
i would just go like this and
cut that off and if you wanted to be
like super
quick about it just go like this
and fold it nicely and neatly and you're
going to get
your four across and if it doesn't
matter to you if they're all exactly the
same or not i mean all of these will be
exactly the same but from
fabric to fabric it may be different so
then you can just cut
along this edge with your fabric
scissors
and go snip snip snip or use a rotary
cutter
and go up the other side and then i just
lightly rounded the corners
using a bowl or a plate and again you
can use a rotary cutter for this
or you could draw using a fabric marker
and then cut that with your scissors
either way you're going to get a nice
rounded edge and then you're going to
take it to your machine and i'm going to
show you what it looks like when you do
it on the serger
okay and now to serge i'm just going to
go around the edge
and i'm going to let the knife just
basically skim off
that little bit and the way i like to
get started is actually to start kind of
after a corner and line it
up right along the edge all right
and i'm just skimming off the edge a
little bit when i get to the corner i'm
actually going to tug
and pull it so that it rounds the corner
with me
and my machine is threaded with four
threads and basically a woolly nylon
so that i get really nice
when i get to the last corner i'm going
to take this tail and pull it
and just move it to the inside so it is
caught in my seam
and then i see it getting close to the
edge
where it's already started i'm going to
just fold it kind of out of the way
and that gives me a pretty
smooth edge i can put just a dot of glue
and then trim the two tails off
but that gives me a nice
pretty smooth edge all the way around
and you see it did not take long it was
like a minute
with a little bit of practice and i am a
fairly new person to surging
so if i can do it you can do it
so here are the three towels that i just
made this one had
like a knit stitch that i just did
around the edge this one was the knit
stitch but i
added an additional straight stitch
again just to stabilize it i want to
make sure that it doesn't
fray or unravel and then this is the
four needle overlock with the woolly
nylon which is just
i love this edge it's so beautiful if
you don't have that you might be able to
find somebody to do that for you
um but anyways i think all
of these edges are very clean they're
pretty and they will keep your towels
durable which is really the point
now let's talk about how you can store
them so
for christmas this year i made stacks of
these in different colors
and i found that if i went ahead and
just folded them
in thirds like this they fit perfectly
in these little baskets
that i ordered from amazon.com and i can
share the link down below
um i put a little pretty ribbon around
it made a little
tag using my e-mark
uh saying that they're non-paper towels
use them in place of napkins or paper
towels
machine wash warmer hot and yeah
so kind of like a little instruction
material but they also work on a paper
towel roll
so here i have a cardboard tube this
actually came from wrapping paper but
you could use an old paper towel roll
and in order to get them to work on your
your tube all you have to do is wrap the
first one around
i don't even add any extra felt or
anything
and then just roll them and overlap them
about a couple of inches
and what you'll see is that they
actually stick to each other
because they're flannel and
you can get oh i would say 10 or 12 of
these
on a roll which just makes them really
uh convenient for family members who
might be
a little hesitant to try something new
and you can see i'm just rolling them
and if you get them right out of the
dryer they're not too too wrinkly i can
smooth them out by hand
and get them on the roll which will
further press them out while they're
still warm
but you can see you can get a lot of
them on here
and stand them up and they're not going
anywhere
and one last thing you know those extra
two to three inches at the end of the
selvage
you can make cotton rounds i cut these
in about two and a half
inches square and then just use the
knife on the serger
to create the rounded edge and if you're
really looking to double down
you can use your favorite panty liner to
trace a template
and make your own these are washable no
more
extra paper products going into
landfills and
no chemicals next to your most delicate
skin well thank you so much for watching
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and have a crafty day