Not Your Grandma's Kitchen Towel

So this is a total knock off.  I saw one of these at C-Cs house, where my sister casually said, 'You could so make those.'  I filed that juicy tidbit away until I found the time to make one.  9 months later.

I got the pot holders at the Dollar Tree and the Microfiber towel at Fred's for 3/$5.  The fabric is leftover from recovering my kitchen chairs.  Didn't I show you that?  Darn.  You missed a great update.

Want to make one too?  Great--let's gather some supplies

Supply List
thin pot holder
kitchen towel (thin, unless your sewing machine doesn't mind sewing through super thick things)
fabric scrap measuring 5" x (towel width + 1")
marking pen
ruler
button

1.  If you are going to embroider on your pot holder, go ahead and to it now.  I placed my initial a little too low.  Oops.  Notice I did the embroidery with the loop at the bottom on the right side of the pot holder.

2.  Making sure that your pattern is running the way you want it (I'm notorious for sewing things on upside down), press the sides and top down 1/2" and then mark 1/2" on the right side at the bottom edge of the fabric scrap.  You can do the marking before the ironing, but I use a marker that disappears with ironing, so you have to the the ironing before the marking.  Or you have to go back and remark.  I speak from experience.

3.  Open up your side edges and align the bottom of the towel, right sides together, with mark you made (and remade) on the bottom of your fabric scrap.  Pin.

4.  Sew as close as you can to the bottom of the towel, making sure that your edges are still flipped open on your fabric scrap.  I think my seam allowance is about 1/8".

5.  Now with the right side of your towel up, turn your fabric scrap to the front, making sure your edges are turned under.  Pin secure and stitch down.  I went ahead and edge stitched all four sides.  Press.

6.  Using a disappearing fabric marker, mark on the right side of the towel both the center running horizontally and vertically.  Do the same on the wrong side of the pot holder.  Now lay your pot holder on the towel, right sides together, matching the centers.  The loop on the pot holder will be pointing towards the bottom of the towel.  Pin it secure.  You can't see it too well in this picture, but your center lines run from the edge of the towel, through the pot holder, and on to the other end.  I let a lot go when I had baby #3 (like colors matching perfectly, and embroidery being perfectly centered) but that doesn't mean I don't still try.  I just don't always rip out and redo when something isn't perfect.

7.  Flip the whole thing over, and fan fold the edges in.  You will be looking at the back side of the towel, so fold the towel edges in (length wise), wrong sides together, so that the fold is even with the edge of the pot holder.  Then fold the edge of the towel again so that right sides are together and the edge of the towel now runs along the side of the pot holder.  The explanation is much harder than just doing it.  Pin secure again.

8.  At this point, flip the whole thing over again, so that you can see the markings on the pot holder back, and sew down the center (width) of the pot holder, making sure that your folded edges under there are nice and flat.  Theoretically it would be easier to sew on the towel side, but you would have had to mark the center line on the back of the towel too, which is just another step, so I opt to do it this way.

9.  Now fold your pot holder in half, right sides together.  The towel should be hanging underneath, and the loop should be on the back side.  Sew your button on the front of the pot holder and you're done!

Now if only I knew someone whose last name starts with B and whose color scheme is black and tan.  Hmmm.

Hope you enjoy!  Let me know if you have any questions, and if you think this is totally lame, please keep such comments to yourself.  I have enough stress in my life.

How to make your own labels

We interrupt Kids Clothing Week Challenge to bring you a small tutorial.  **Gasp** a tutorial.  I originally called this a tutorial.  This is more of a 'Here's my take on someone else's tutorial.'  We'll see how this goes.

Have you ever had this urge to figure something out and yet not been quite able to get there?  That's me with the whole clothing label thing.  I'm way too cheap to buy nice ones, though they are totally within reach (not the woven ones, but printed ones for sure).  I hate the thought of ordering some and then getting them in the mail and being disappointed with the quality of the base fabric.  I've seen tutorials for printing on fabric (with a laser printer...I have ink jet) and thought that would maybe work.

For a while I embroidered my own labels and then I totally changed my blog, rebranding everything.  I don't have a good font in my embroidery software to mimic my new blog branding (shoulda thought about that when choosing that font, huh) and all efforts to self digitize it fell pretty flat.  I also de-spise trimming ends/tails of thread between letters and designs, which is pretty much standard when embroidering little labels.

I was reading a really nice blog Elm Street Life and she has a great tutorial for printing your own labels.  This morning  I temporarily forgot I don't have a laser printer and got excited about making my own labels to use in the last few days of KCWC.  I got into Word and tried my best to get moving.  Something that should have only taken me a few minutes took about an hour--I had to restore my computer a few days ago and in so doing dumped the new font I used to rebrand the blog.  Gag.  So, after reloading it etc etc, I finally got it together.

Here's the template I used (in Google Docs).

LABEL TEMPLATE

SIDE LABEL TEMPLATE

For the label template, cells A, B, & C are where you turn under for your top border.  I believe it works out to be 3/8".  Cells G, H & I are where you turn under for your bottom border, again 3/8".  Cells D & F are where you turn under for your sides, which are 1/2".   I only outlined them in that first cell so you could see where your allowances are.  You will put your text or image in Cell E.  Text seemed to work better for me than an image.  If you like a raggy look around the edges, simply don't fold.  In Google Docs you can turn off the lines in the table but clicking in any cell, going to Table > Table Properties and change the Table Border to 0 pt.

For the side label template, the premise is the same.  Cells A-E are your top border.  Cells I-M are your bottom border.  Fold in 1/2 and then you should have 1/2" seam allowance to sew in a side seam.

I didn't realize that Google Docs can be so limiting, so I also saved the templates as PDFs.  You may be able to do something with that better.

LABEL TEMPLATE AS PDF

SIDE LABEL TEMPLATE AS PDF

After I made my templates, I followed Elm Street's tutorial to the letter.  My printer did not appreciate having to suck up fabric and paper at th same time, so some of the printing got a little whompy.

As to the ink jet thing, setting the ink with heat does help it not to smear.  The World Wide Web says everywhere that ink jet ink is water soluable and will wash out or fade badly when washed with soap.  I got a label wet and then washed it with soap--it did fade a little bit, but hopefully after 50,000 washings it won't be a white square sewn in the back of the kids' things.  I suspect buying labels off of Etsy will be cheaper than buying a laser printer.  Wonder if I can sell that one to The Bank (my truly affectionate name for hubs).

Here's how my labels turned out.  Seeing them done made me want to get it right.  For real.  So, for now, I'm going to invest in some of these fabric sheets.  I can get 3 for $10 and if I use a coupon, I'm hoping it will make them $6.  A color laser printer runs about $150 (I think) so I can get 15 packs of these things before I pay for a laser printer.  I can also get a hundred or so labels from Etsy for $20 (MOL) and that may be how I go. 

 

Check out the new labels in action

May the Force be with you...

Okay, so Star Wars lovers, breathe. No, I don't know the real name of the robe-thing that Yoda, or any Jedi knight for that matter, wears. 

Rambo came home from baseball with an invitation to a Star Wars birthday party.  In fine print, written so innocently it said, "Wear your favorite Star Wars costume."  Sure thing, sweetie.  We have a lightsaber from the General Dollar and that's about it.  My son thinks my sewing skills are way better than they really are, so he looked at me like, 'duh, Mom.  Just make something.'

With much dreading I asked Rambo which character it was to be.  I was hoping for something hard, like R2D2 (yeah, not really.  I'm not insane).

"Yoda.  No, Darth! Vader!" came the reply. 

Now comes the wicked Mommyology that we all do.  Come on, don't look all horrified or innocent.  You manipulate your kid just like I do.

"But son, Darth Vader is a bad guy and I bet that mask gets hot."  So, Yoda it was.

The last time I had to send him somewhere in costume was Cowboy Day at school, for which I made a cowboy shirt (from scratch), chaps, vest, and scarf.  My husband threatened to commit me if I went off my rocker like that again, so I felt like I was safe to do just the Yoda robe thing and maybe some ears.  I didn't want my kid showing up looking dorky when everyone else just had a lightsaber or Star Wars shirt.

For the robe I used a tutorial found here:  http://www.degraeve.com/jedirobe/
I sewed it out of the cheapest broadcloth I could find but did finish all the seams so it wouldn't come apart if we actually decide to play with it.  I used a 40% off coupon at the Lobby, so my fabric was seriously about $4.50.  I would have thrifted something but in my haste to Git R Done I took the easy way out.

Want to make some Yoda ears?

Supplies:

1 sheet of green craft foam
Sewing machine or glue gun

1.  Draw out your basic ear shape as below.  I did mine from simple paper and kept trimming until I got the size right.

2.  Cut your ears out of foam X 2.

3.  Roll into the ear shape and stitch at the bottom.  Remember to make a left and a right ear.  I almost didn't.

4.  Cut ear slits and let Yoda go defeat Darth Vader.

**Breaking party news:  My kid and one other showed up in a Star Wars outfit.  The ears came off in the kid's driveway and the robe is wadded up and filthy in the back of my hub's truck.  I'm gonna barf.