Bath Towel Cap

Hey, everyone. Thanks for watching. My name's Nikki. And in this video, I'm going to show you how to make this little towel hat. So it's designed to be put on after your shower.

You tuck all the wet ends of your hair up in your hat so that you're not dripping all over the place, helps dry your hair while you're getting ready. So there is a link in the description of this video and also in the chat for you to download a PDF that has the supplies list and full instructions for this project. And if you're watching live, you can type in any comments, questions concerns into the chat box and I'll see those and I'll get any questions answered for you. So make sure you click the link to download that PDF. You can save it for later, um, or use it to follow along with me right now and I'm going to take you through it, step by step to make this little towel hat.

So it's a really easy, quick, easy project for supplies. We really only need two things. We need some terry cloth for our, our towel hat. So that can be in yardage or you can just use like me a towel that you have lying around to upcycle into your hat. And you'll also need some elastic.

So I'm using one inch wide elastic and you'll need about 20 inches and then a safety pin for threading that through our casing. So if like me, you're using a towel, it will need to be at least a 20 inch wide by 40 inch long towel for the, the rectangle measurements we're using for our hat. And the first thing we're going to do is we're going to take off one finished edge of the, the long side. So leave these short edges, leave those short finished edges, but on one long side, we're just gonna take off that finished edge and that just makes it a little bit easier for cutting out our rectangles and for cutting our curve and finishing our seam allowances. So I'm going to stack those and I'm gonna just slice off that long edge.

All right now keeping this folded. So I have my finished short edges matching. I'm going to measure along this lower finished edge 15 inches from the corner. So we'll go 15 inches and I'm going to mark that and I have that listed in the supplies as well, a chalk marker, uh, chalk, pencil, chalk wheel, fabric marker of some sort to mark 15 inches over. And then we're going to do 14.5 inches from this lower finished edge 14.5 inches up in this direction.

And then we wanna connect those lines to cut out our rectangles. So I'm making sure my towel is flat. Yeah. OK. All right.

There we go. Now, we have are two rectangles. Now we need to round off these upper corners to create a nice, gentle curve, four hour that upper edge of our hat. So I'm gonna do this one layer at a time and I'm gonna fold that rectangle in half again. So our finished lower edges are stacked and then four inches from this corner along this upper edge or I'm going to put a little mark four inches and then I'm just going to kind of freehand it.

You can trace something if you want, but it's not terribly important. Just get a nice gentle curve there down into this side scene and then we'll trim that away along your line. So there I have my symmetrical curve and then I'm going to use this one to cut my remaining rectangle. So I'm going to layer those rectangles together and curb that. So we have all matching curves.

OK. All right. The next step is we are going to get our towel right sides together and it's hard to tell on a towel, what is your right and your wrong side? But sometimes you can tell at this lower edge, it just looks a little bit more finished on this side. So I'm going to use this as my right side.

So right sides together, going to align our raw edges. I'm gonna put just a couple of pins in here to keep my layers secured and then we're going to stitch these raw edges. And I'm using a 38 inch seam allowance. Honestly, you can use, it's, it's a very uh forgiving project. So you can be flexible here between 3/8 and half inch is fine.

So I'm going to slide my machine in here and just using my straight stitch. I'm gonna go all the way around 38 inch seam allowance. And you'll notice when you cut this towel that you'll have a lot of fuzzies that come off. So we're gonna go back in and finish off these sea allowances as well. If you have a surgery, you can sew this with your surgery to sew it and finish off the seam allowances in one go.

So we're just gently going around those curves. We're back stitching at the beginning and end of our scene and then for finishing my seam allowances, I'm just gonna grab a zig zag stitch. You can use any type of overcast stitch. It's just to trap those raw edges of that terry cloth that just love to, to come off in those little fuzzies. I made this project for my daughter because she has super thick hair that's like a sponge.

It just soaks soaks up all the water and then she doesn't towel her hair off after her shower. So she's just dripping all over her shirt. So she loves this little hat. And you saw on my finished sample, we put a little flower on her hat for her. So now every time after her shower, she, she puts her hat on and feels like it's spa day and the dimensions that we're using for this hat.

Um It fits my daughter. She's 10, but it's good for adult size as well. But of course, it's, you know, subject to, it's a variation if you feel you need it to be narrower or wider. And the elastic has a lot to do with that. Our 20 inch length of elastic because that is, that elastic is what controls the, um how tight that hat fits on your head.

All right. So I'm gonna slide this out of the way real quick. So our seam allowances are finished and that's going to trap all those little fuzzies. Let's get all those out of the way. OK.

So there's our hat. Now, the last step is to create our casing. So we're going to fold this finished lower edge up. And because we're using one inch wide elastic, we want our casing to be at least one and a quarter inches where you, you wanna stitch at least one and a quarter inches from the fold. Because if you stitch one inch from the fold, you're going to have a casing that is one inch wide and your, your elastic might have a hard time sliding through if it's too tight in the casing.

So at least one and a quarter inches. But if like, you have this sort of decorative element on your towel, I wanna preserve that and I don't want like a stitching line right in the middle of that. So I'm going to be stitching right at the upper edge of this. So for me that winds up being about 1.5 inches. So you can be a little bit, uh, you can vary it a little bit depending on your towel.

And I'm pinning on the right side because I'm going to be sewing from the right side. And then right here when we come to our side scene, we have kind of a lot of bulk right there. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to clip that seam allowance just a little bit. I'm clipping through my zigzag stitching and I, I'm getting like an eighth of an inch from the seam line, make sure you don't cut your seam line. But I'm just, I'm clipping that so that I can push one side one way and one side the other way for when I fold up this casing, it's going to help distribute that bulk.

So my seam allowance is going one way on this side and the other way on the other side and it's going to make it a lot nicer for you to sew over. So if you're going to be making this project, who would you be making it for? Would you be making it for yourself or for somebody else? I think my daughter is really going to love that. We're going to have matching mother, daughter after shower hats.

So if you're using yardage, um and you don't have a prefinished edge right here, obviously, you would zigzag stitch that clipping my seam allowances on the other side to fold that up. Mandy is wondering if you can do this in silk. I bet you can. It's very simple shapes just to create the sort of bag shape for this hat. And you can see in the pictures on that PDF download.

It's my daughter wearing the hat. Um It's sort of when you're wearing it, it's, you know, slouching behind you so you can tuck your hair up into the hat. All right. So I'm going to bring my machine back in here, select my straight stitch and it doesn't matter where you start, we're just going to be sewing. So we're sewing all the way around.

But I better, I better put a little pin in to remind myself. So we have to leave an opening. So I'm going to, you saw me pinning parallel to the seam line, I'm going to pin perpendicular to the seam line to remind myself to leave an opening. So we wanna leave two or three inches of an opening for sliding our elastic through our casing. So I am gonna back sit at the beginning and end of your opening and I'm just sewing right at the upper edge of that decorative element, decorative element on my towel.

And here's something to note. So my decorative element, I should have made sure that those aligned a little bit better. So if you have a Decor decorative element, try and make sure those match up at the side, seam, I'm just gonna kind of blend that seam and I'm using a matching thread and I can kind of feel that finished edge of the towel underneath. And I'm, I'm stitching right on the right underneath that. Yeah, that lump of that finished edge.

All right. And we're coming up to the other side of our opening. So I'm going to backstitch again, cut my thread. So there is my opening and I've got my casing stitched all the way around otherwise. So I've got my elastic to thread through and my safety pin, there's my opening and, um, I just, I had one inch wide elastic.

So that's what I, I was using. It's a good width for this. If you have something a little bit wider, a little bit narrower, of course, you can use that. But like I was talking about earlier with the size of the casing, just make sure that you fold up your casing enough. So that, um, so that your elastic has room to go through it and conversely make sure your casing isn't too wide for your elastic.

If your casing is too wide, your elastic is, is more prone to twisting in the casing. So you want to have an appropriate casing width. So as I'm sliding my elastic through here, I'm going to just pin the other end to the towel so that it doesn't disappear inside the casing on me. So as I'm sliding this through here, I'm being careful not to get it twisted. And there are, there are other ways to do the elastic on this.

If you wanted to, you could um you could stitch your elastic into, in the round, into a circle before you stitch the casing and then you could fold the casing up around your circle of elastic. It's just another way to do it gets you to the same place. And as you're sliding your, your pin through this seam, sometimes your safety pin will get kind of caught on your seam allowances on the inside of the casing. So you just kind of have to wiggle that pin around, check the chat here. See if anybody had any questions.

Looks like we're good so far. All right, we're almost through. So I'm gonna unpin that side and like I was saying before, um, if you need to change sizes on anything, feel free to do. So, and this 20 inch length of elastic is, is the most determining factor in the size of the hat. So if you, uh, you know, you can measure around your head and, and see kind of what size of elastic you'll need and you do want the elastic to be a little bit, you know, smaller than your head circumference so that it'll hold that hat on, but it's up to you how comfortable you are, um, with having an elastic and how tight you want it around your head.

So I've got my ends out, take your safety pin off and then we're going to lap those ends over. And here again, you can lap it, you know, an inch over, you can lap it half inch over depending on, you know how tight you want that elastic to be. So I'm going to bring my machine back in here, I'm gonna try to pull my elastic out a little bit more. So I have more room to work with. So I'm lapping this over and I'm going to select a zigzag stitch and I'm going to zigzag over each raw edge of this elastic and that is going to make sure that that is good and secure.

I'm back stitching and then I'm going to flip it over and do the same thing on this side. OK. So there's my elastic, it is good and secure. So then we can sort of try and distribute those gathers a little bit around in our casing. And then we have this opening left.

So I'm going to select my straight stitch again and you might have to, you know, if your elastic is gathering up that fabric, you might have to stretch the elastic a little bit so that your towel is flat under the foot and we're just going to finish the rest of that scene. All right. So that's our, our opening is all closed up and then you can really distribute those gathers evenly over your elastic and in the instructions I give this little tip and this is something that I say any time I'm, you know, uh demonstrating an elastic waistband or an elastic casing of any kind. If you're concerned about your elastic twisting in the casing. One thing that you can do is once you get your gathers all evenly distributed over the, the elastic, how you want it to be, you can at each side scene, stitch a straight stitch um vertically along that just like right in the ditch or, you know, right to the side of the seam if you want honestly over that elastic and do that at each edge.

So you have two fixed points and that's going to prevent your elastic from twisting in the casing. So there is your finished casing. We have all finished edges and there is your towel hat and of course, optional step to add a little flower or a little decoration onto your hat. But that is your finished project. So Thank you so much for watching.

I hope you enjoyed this video and I hope you enjoy making this project.