TUTORIAL: Personalized Bath Towel

Continuing the tradition of making gifts for the sweet girl next door (she and her momma love all things homemade), I made my neighbor a personalized bath towel. Here's the how-to.

Supplies:

• Bath towel
• Scrap of fabric
• Wonder Under, or similar paper-backed fusible web
• Name (letters) printed onto computer paper
• Tracing paper
• Pencil
• thread, scissors, sewing machine
• iron, pressing cloth (muslin or other medium weight fabric)

1. Print name onto computer paper.
TIP: Use a font with thick/bold letters. Skinny letters make for skinny scraps of fabric, which are hard to work with and barely show up on the towel.

2. Fuse fabric to Wonder Under.
Cut out the name. This helps you see what size you need to cut your fabric and Wonder Under. TIP: Cut your Wonder Under slightly smaller than your fabric --approximately 1/8" on each side -- so that none of the adhesive sticks to your ironing board when you fuse the Wonder Under to your fabric.


Lay wrong side of fabric against the bumpy side of the Wonder Under. Press for 5-8 seconds with hot, dry iron. Let cool.

3. Trace name and cut letters.

Now that your fabric is fused to the Wonder Under, flip your fabric over so that the right side of your fabric is laying on your table and the paper backing of the Wonder Under is facing up.

Lay tracing paper on the paper backing with the right side of the tracing paper facing down against the paper backing.

Lay your computer paper face down on the tracing paper. You should still be able to see the shape of your letter through the wrong side of the computer paper. TIP: If you can't see through the paper and are familiar with your computer software, you can print the name in reverse and trace the letters exactly as they appear on your printout.

Use the dull tip of a mechanical pencil to trace the outline of the letters.


Your name should look like this. See how the letters are backwards? If you picked up the strip of fabric and held it in front of a mirror, you would be able to read the name correctly.


Cut letters following the traced lines. When you flip over the letters so that the fabric side faces up, the name should look normal.

4. Adhere letters to towel.
Peel the paper backing off each letter.


Arrange letters on the towel.


Cover letters with a damp press cloth. With iron at wool setting, press firmly for 10-15 seconds. Repeat until each letter is fused.


Peel back your pressing cloth and check to make sure that the letters are bonded to the towel, especially along edges and corners. If the letters are damp, iron them to remove the excess moisture.

5. Edgestitch around letters.

Edgestitch around each letter. I used a narrow zig zag stitch. Remember, since your letters are already adhered to the towel, you don't need to use pins. Hooray! TIP: When you reach a corner, leave your needle down in the towel, lift the presser foot, and pivot the towel 90 degrees. TIP: If I made this towel again, I would use darker thread. The thread I used was an exact match to the blue in the fabric, but barely showed up on the towel.


Voila!


Wrap it with a bow and it's ready to go.

Hope this helps. If you make a towel, please leave a comment and let me know! I'd love to stop by your blog and see your good work. :)