UPDATED June Tailor Hanging Towel Tutorial | with Shabby Fabrics

[Music] hi it's jen from shabby fabrics i have a fun project for you today this is the tune taylor quilts as you go hanging towel now you may have said jen you've already done this video and you would be correct however it's different and that's why i decided to make the video again because our customers love making these hanging towels they're so amazing that's a fun way to have a cute towel and they're really absorbent towels you can absolutely use them and they're of course fantastic for gift giving especially a housewarming gift how they're different now than before is originally you had to hem up the two sides of the towel and we thought you know what why don't we just have our towels made especially for shabby fabrics that already have those two sides hemmed as well as the bottom so we can just skip that step and jump right into the fun so that's why i said let's just show you how even easier they are than before so let's jump right in and as you can see they look amazing and no matter what collection you're using i have everyday fabric kind of a cute retro beautiful christmas fabric the haunting me will glow oh my gosh in these glow in the dark i mean you can just imagine that it's fun to actually decorate for every single month every single season with these and again great for gift giving so inside let me put these off to the side so we have plenty of space inside you will have in your kits you will have a batting as well as a towel and of course some instructions so let's grab those out and then i'll be referring to those so you'll have your towel and let's just show you it's got the cute little shabby fabrics label on that see before this towel had raw edges over here and you had to turn them under twice and stitch them down and you don't have to do that anymore but one thing that you will need to keep doing is this is a raw edge up here be sure to do maybe a zigzag or search that edge and you want to wash this towel they absolutely shrink up and i've got one done here this is a pre-wash towel and this is washed can you believe that it's amazing how much they shrink and that kind of shrinkage just adds to their absorbency they're soft and they're ready to go so let's put the unwashed towel aside and we will jump right into what do we do next we have a piece of this batting and as you take it out of your kit it's naturally has these folds don't worry about that you can just take it out kind of smooth it out with your hands june tanner says please don't iron the batting it might distort or shrink it so we have just learned that as we take it out of the package maybe the night before you're about ready to sew or even right before is fine you're going to see me actually you saw me literally take it out of the package and we'll be able to sew and as you kind of work with it it just smooths out those wrinkles so no no need to iron that so we've washed our towel we of course searched that edge i think we just actually did a zigzag we washed it and it kind of has that little bit of accordion go ahead and give that a good press don't be shy about using steam the main thing is it's very see how stretchy these are you can't you don't have to baby these go ahead and just kind of work it into the shape that you want it to be and give it a good press and try to make it as much of a rectangle as you can alright you'll want to have three fabrics you'll have your background fabric your fabric over the top which is actually on the back and then the fabric here we both use as our trim at the bottom and we have fabric covered button now inside your kits we literally press out those buttons right here at shabby fabrics with a beautiful metal shank on the back we just think it's so nice to have a fabric cover button just to complete the look instead of just a regular button we really love to have the whole thing coordinated so that's one of the nice things too about grabbing a kit so we take care of that for you we are we need two of those fabrics cut to eight by eleven that's one of our very first steps so we've done that ahead of time and then our two toppers let's see let me just this is the sunlit uh i think a sunlight bloom collection i've done the kind of blue and the gold and you'll want to make sure you grab some coordinating thread you're going to see the threads um on these both here and in the back when you stitch the buttonhole but we'll get to that a little bit later so you'll be seeing me use some colored thread today which if you're normally probably seeing me use just a cream but as far as these two strips that are cut to three by eight you'll have one for the front and one for the back i've cut those ahead of time and our first step has us folding those wrong sides together with a good press now if you really want to have a nice body to this and really have it hold its fold you might want to consider adding some sizing to your fabric actually before you cut these out even so it's just any time i really want something to hold its press especially along this trim go ahead and add the sizing to the fabric before you cut it to shape i've tried to add sizing before when i have forgotten and sometimes it can kind of distort that so definitely recommend if you do decide to add sizing you do that up front so we'll press those and with both fabrics we'll go right sides together let's just do a pin we'll take that to our machine and do a quarter inch seam allowance now i've just loaded my machine with kind of that kind of sagey green because that's going to be one of the things that will be coming up soon of course you don't need to be doing the piecing with a coordinating thread to start with but why not it doesn't hurt anything to go ahead and have that first color of thread loaded into your machine so let's go ahead and sew our quarter inch seam allowances [Music] so we've sewed a quarter of an inch press seam allowance toward the topper so this is our topper so we'll take this to our iron let's warm up that seam oop i've got another pin in there you know what that was kind of a happy accident i have had pins in the past like see this it's no issue this is a glass head pin i've had pins before when i was a early quilter i could barely afford anything and i had some plastic and i touched it like i freaked just like that forgot a pin and touched it with the iron and it melted onto the fabric um and i could not get that off so definitely getting some good pins with glass head is a really important uh step and definitely worth the investment those are the clover patchwork pins and then that magnetic pin cushion is fabulous so if you're as much of a klutz as i am and you spill your pins what i love about that is i can just go clean them all up and it organizes them there's a i think that's just so clever the way that the magnets are lined up here the pins line up this way they're not all over the they're not in every uh direction but they line up kind of this north to south all right both of those are ready to go so what is this next step place the two topper fabrics right side together so let's go ahead and do that right side together what is our next step cut the long bottom edge of batting on the printed line so that's when we get to start using our batting so let's put that aside so the edge that they're talking about is actually right here this one so we'll cut that directly on the line i'm going to get my bigger ruler here you know what else is nice if you do any kind of small projects pocket prayers or any types of things like that you can keep these little bad pieces of batting and they're really really just nice to have on hand make that just push that down just a touch more i want to get that right on that line okay now our next step so we've cut on the long bottom edge of batting on the printed line place batting a printed side up i'm going to take you one step further because this is something that's actually not in the pattern but that i recommend and this is just a lot of fabric going on out here i'm going to cut about a half an inch just away from that line and i'm just going to save that batting that's actually a lot of things that you could do with that batting and i just kind of like having less bulk to deal with again this is not an essential step but it's something that we have found is helpful and you can see i'm just i'm making a very general cut it's nothing specific let's put that aside for now all right now let's jump back into our pattern i feel this it's just a little bit nicer dealing with less bulk um cut the long bottom edge of the batting we're going to place the batting printed side up onto the layered topper fabrics this is the key aligning the bottom edge of the batting with the seam allowance when i first made this my instinct was to put this here but the thing i missed the detail i missed was this uh print the side up onto layered fabric lining the bottom edge of the batting with the seam with the seam allowance so it's here it's right there that we want to be doing this okay so you want to be putting that right on that seam allowance and i just centered that you can see there's plenty of space basically if your fabric is within the blue outline you're good to go pin all layers let's do that and i like to use my flower head pins because i'm starting to deal with more and more bulk and i'm going to keep that out of the way of my presser foot and now you're going to be looking for a friction pen there's one more thing i want to show you see how you want these to line up like that that's a really essential thing so while we're so busy focused on this lining up with that seam allowance i also want that to just be there and i'm going to probably put a pin right here i just don't want that to shift on me and same let's see how we're lined up looks like we're good i'm just going to we'll need this needle a little bit later let's put that over here let's just pin that real quick now you'll want to grab a marking tool it could be a chalk pen it could be a friction pen from this line this blue line just lay your ruler on and just visually extend that and actually draw that line both here and on the other side and our pattern does tell us to do that now we're just going to sew directly on that line you might want to shorten your stitch length um we definitely this i am going to short my stitch length not a ton just a touch and we'll sew directly on that line at the corner go ahead and stop needle down and just pivot [Music] come on one more stitch there we go i want to get in that corner [Music] oh i think they went back that'll work that'll definitely work we're not building rockets it'll work [Music] [Music] okay so let's remove our pins and now we'll take our ruler and cut a quarter of an inch away from our uh where we just stitched so here there this is where a spinning mat would be handy i don't have that with me today so that's fine we'll just turn the project you'll trim a quarter all the way around now these don't be afraid to use these towels once you make them because you're going to want to have an excuse to make more of them anyway and they're super absorbent towels i love that um there we go what's funny is you're going to have a hard time convincing people to use them because they think oh i probably shouldn't use this you're like yes go ahead and use it that's why i made it and hey if it gets tattered over time because you've used it so much that's a perfect excuse to get to use it again now these scraps are great for making things like pocket prayers in fact i have one on set that i made that was left over from these fabrics and it's just a great thing to have so you have some fabric to be able to do some other really small projects with so keep that in mind um the next step they mention is to go ahead and clip the corners and then turn right side out so basically any place that you believe may have some bulk maybe this corner right here don't be afraid to trim away some of that bulk just like that let's see here maybe if we i think that's probably the best way to clip into that just don't get so close that you're potentially snipping those threads i might clip a little bit off right here sometimes my point doesn't come out quite as sharp as i would like i think that's probably all that we need i might give a couple more snips and now we'll turn it through that's where you're going to be grabbing for your point turner because i can get the sides out fine but that point i really can't i'm trying to poke that through with my finger that's about as far as it's going to go and that's when that point turner comes into play the clover point turner has the nice point as well as the rounded edge so if you're doing a project that has a rounded edge of course you'll use this end and today we'll definitely be using that pointy area and i love how it just gets into those spots i can't get i'm just never going to be able to get that with my fingers so you know i don't use a lot of notions as a general rule um you kind of see the same things over and over because those are the ones that work um i know there's a lot of notions out there in the world and i'm sure more that i'll discover but i'm always wanting to only bring you things that i truly know work and make your life a lot easier in your sewing room so let's give a good press now we can press this thing we couldn't press it before and notice how guys it's perfect you don't have to worry about ironing that bedding ahead of time i know you're going to be tempted because we're all like that everything all pressed out smooth but you will be able to do that pressing at this point i want that point out just a little bit further there we go i like that point nice and pointy now the cool thing and we'll get to that a little bit later is you actually have the option of later on making the front be this or that so you have two looks that you can decide on um our next step is actually to make this portion that's on the bottom so you'll measure your towel um and then you'll add an inch to that measurement so let's let's bring our towel out and i'll line up on a measurement of you know you want to measure it of course with it already all pressed out and what it's going to be and it looks like my towel is 19 and a half and i knew that ahead of time because i measured it before we rolled our cameras so i went ahead and cut my trim piece already to 2 inches by 20 and a half so let me just check my measurement make sure i've got that right and so because it was 19 and a half we added the full inch at 20 and a half and now we will take that to our pressing mat and again another what clover's having their day with with our notions i mean they're just they've got the solutions they really think through these notions this is called the hot ruler you might have seen me use this before what i love about it is i can put this on my fabric touch it with my iron i don't have to worry most rulers as you know are plastic i can't put an iron on that so this is fabulous we're going to lay this down here that big bold line is a half inch i'm going to roll that edge up until my fabric touches that bold blue line and i'm just going to press you can steam don't be shy you cannot ruin it this thing is like you just can't ruin it you just can't it can take heat that is unbelievable and see how it's just not it's just the same so if you do well any kind of pressing where you need to have an a specific measurement get one of these rollers it is my go-to i i fish for it when i find it i'm like yep now i know i truly have um my half inch so before i go any further i'm just going to double check with my towel that i know that's a good length and if i need to adjust it i will let's look real quick see my towel is kind of relaxed a little bit and i know once i get it on there and kind of yep it's going to be just just so alright next step will be to um fold both the top and bottom edge in again a half an inch and i love that this ruler is long so i'm not inching my way i can get a good stretch of this my full half inch this is that sizing thing again that's why i recommended maybe doing sizing so that this step that crease you're going to make will hold and these fabrics do have sizing in there see how that's just holding that edge it does a really nice job and that edge makes it such a nice thing to pivot over and now you'll know that this line is truly going to be straight and not kind of kind of wavering okay trying to keep my head out of the way for the overhead camera and i'll repeat the same on the other [Music] side [Music] okay let's have a look see how we've done look how even that is i i think that's amazing because in the day i used to just kind of like well that's about half an inch and it would kind of just be kind of on a half an inch so i appreciate precision every time um next instruction is they say measure up one and three quarter inches from the bottom so i think it's just easiest to grab a ruler and lay that let's see one and three quarter about like that and now you just have an edge you pull that even as much as i can now you have an edge to lay that against let's see did i get that even let me try again trying to keep my head out of the way so if you just run that right along the top and if you have a longer ruler even better then you can just lay that along the whole length and this is again where those flower head pins are going to come into play so let's grab some of those going through any kind of bulk i grab for the flower head pins versus my patchwork pins because i don't want them to bend they're more delicate and can bend much more easily this is where the colored thread comes into play and that's why i went ahead and loaded that as my first color is i knew that um i could absolutely piece with that no problem which you saw me sew the topper that trim piece on but now i'm ready to go with this and you'll sew just grab another one of those real quick just like you're seeing right here i mean i just sewed like an eighth of an inch on both sides to secure that so let's go do that now [Music] so [Music] in the end just turn come straight down good and pivot and go back the other [Music] side [Music] for this next step so here's the trim on the bottom for the next step it says accordion full towel outside edges towards center to measure six inches that one threw me i wasn't sure how do i do this so this is what we've discovered as you can see we've made enough towels that we think we have a really um easy way to get this accomplished that's repeatable so let me show you what that is this is not included inside your instructions so if we just take one of our um towels this one for example what they're talking about is this accordion fold is this so that it fits about that footprint is about six inches wide so let's just measure that real quick this one's just a little bit more we're just trying to fit basically fold our towel up so that it fits inside here how do we do that here's what we felt was the easiest way to do it the center fold right here is about three inches so we said you know what how about this idea go ahead and turn your towel so the trim is this direction it's it's on the facing down and we want to find the center so we're going to find the center and we're just going to mark that center with a pin right there so we know that if that center band is about three inches we'll take our ruler and it could be i love my quilting friend ruler that's my one of my favorites and i'm going to lay this on here i'll turn it over this way so that there's my one there's my center so that if i pin one and a half inches to the left of that and one and a half inches to the right of that that's my three inch center lane so you see that so far let me get my head out of the way it's just kind of establishing this is going to be that center fold here now go ahead and take this side it doesn't matter if you start with the left and right and you're going to fold this back until you see it's just that pin is right in line with that go ahead and kind of just finger press that okay now if i kind of fold that back see that's my center until i'm just past center just like that go ahead and let's pin that in place keep your pins away from that top half inch because we'll actually be doing some sewing up there i want your entire pin a good two inches down at least let's pin it down here let's repeat that on the left side this is the pin we're looking at right now we're going to bring the side in until see that pin right there until we've brought our towel over that that pin is running right down that side let's give that a little press now we're going to fold that back you know what i'm going to re-pin something mine kind of crept a little bit on that side of my center see that that's my center pin i wanted to be just a breath over there and i think i kind of got a little ambitious there so let's just re-pin that so again we'll fold this one over so we'll our beam with our pin our left pin fold this back until it meets at that center it doesn't overlap they just kind of butt up against each other nice and pin again being mindful to keep your pins away from this upper section where we'll be sewing okay now we're going to flip everything over let's flip everything over so we have our kind of our center lane that looks good now we know we want to have this six inches and if we look at our topper and measure that that topper is really about six and a half inches if you're over that six by a little bit it's fine it's going to fit in here but you don't want to be too much because there's going to be a lot of bulk going in there so now what i do is i just grab this and i just do a little tuck just like this keeping in mind i'm trying to build a footprint overall that's about six inches this is the part where it's just a little bit of finagling not too much and i'm just going to put a pin in there and see if that's going to work for us let's just put a pin there and let's go do the same thing on the other side where i'm trying to just have this distance and this distance you're just trying to have it visually be equal now if we take this up to our ruler i'm probably just a little bit on the wide side so we might have to talk a little bit more under see are we going to be okay we know we have a six and a half inch opening let's pin that pin pin pin for sure pin now on this one so if we do this are we going to fit in there we will because ultimately that's where this is all going is inside there so let's pin now our instructions i'm going to pin everything i just don't want anything moving pin pin pin if you pin a lot you can't get in too much trouble our instructions say sew a half inch from the raw edge to hold the pleats in place so i'm going to remove these these really were just markers for me and i need to get them out of the way i'm going to sew across the top and this is where that heavier needle may come into play and that's why i have the size 116 denim chrome needles with me this is going through a lot of bulk and an 80 12 needle which is used for piecing could work i think this is a better needle for the mission today so i have that actually loaded into my machine let's go sew a half an inch if you're inclined to draw that half inch if you're more comfortable drawing that and now you're just sewing on the line by all means go ahead and do that because this is all going to be tucked inside your towel so i i might as well just draw just because i just wanted you to see what that's like let's go sew through all those layers now i can keep the green in there there's no need to change the thread right now [Music] okay so here's where we lots of pens you have a lot of pins to remove some are on the top some are in the back don't want to miss any of those let's just double check we've got everything out of there now i like to go ahead and actually press those pleats and that's actually a step i could have done and probably should have done before i even went to the sewing machine but it's not too late we definitely pressed our pleats into our towel it just gives it a more finished look you can see how crisp those are not absolutely necessary but visually looks really impressive and hey that's that's part of the deal too just looking looking good so let's do that right now now for the next step uh we're actually very close to finishing our towel the next step of course is feeding that into here and then stitching across the bottom basically putting a buttonhole in this and you're on your way so they have us feed this it says insert folded towel one inch into the topper now i know that this topper here this portion is about one and a quarter so if you feed that most of the way up here you're going to be well inside where you need to be now this is where you'll have to decide do you want this on the front with that flap coming across or do you like this look and then you would switch it so you do need to make a decision right here of which which one you want to be quote the front and i think i like those flowers to be in my front so i will choose this and i'm just going to get that in there nice and even and about an inch it's easier if you kind of look at it straight on so you can make sure it's nice and even and not cattywompus in there so let's just make a little bit of space i feel like that's pretty even right there maybe a little bit more again those flower head pins are going to be really important to us let's see i think i will sew with it with this direction i'm going to put these here we're going to sew just show you where we are we're sewing just across that bottom portion by about a quarter of an inch so you want to keep those pins up and out of the way they're doing their job they're holding everything together nothing is shifting but you don't really want to remove them so get them get them up and away and let's go so you're going through a lot of bulk this is when that bulkier needle that heavier needle is really going to shine okay look at that how adorable is this now if you know that um hey you know what i'm not really gonna ever uh you know need to un release this you don't have to put the buttonhole stitch in there but i i like this over my oven has a handle and so i just pop that over there and i actually use i usually use mine so i have a true buttonhole but if yours is just going to be decorative all you really need to do at this point is you could just have your button and you can just stitch that in place you don't need to go through the step of making the buttonhole now if you want to be able to release that the way i just did you'll want to go ahead and set your machine up for the buttonhole and i'm going to be changing thread to be pink so that you because of course you are going to see some of the thread for the buttonhole so i'll go ahead and set that up and when i come back we'll go ahead and make our buttonhole and finish up our towel so my machine is all set up now for the buttonhole stitch and now i need to determine where i want to have that positioned and that's where you want to really um figure out where you'd like that to land so looking at ours right here there's really not a whole lot of guidance in the pattern for that it's more of where you want that button to sit we measured up about two inches from the point of our towel so i'll do that right now and just kind of pick two inches up from center and just marked that's a great place to start about right there but definitely test out your buttonhole stitch on some scrap fabric make sure it's landing where you want it to be it's as wide as you want to be as long as you want it to be and make sure your button is going to fit into there before you do your towel so i know it's exciting to get going but make sure it's where you want it to be so i will start that here and let's go just incredible this is the 3a of course um buttonhole so we'll go ahead now and slit that with our kai scissors you want some really sharp scissors here and be careful you don't want to be stitching or cutting what you've just done so i just kind of fold that where it's exactly on top of itself and make a little i mean tiny slit just so tiny to get that going we'll just cut that open so fun i know our family has some uh now that my kids friends are getting married um you know it's it's time to have wedding gifts and besides the quilts that we love to make i just love practical gifts that are also really cute and this is definitely in that category so giving you know a coordinating set of cute towels for the kitchen is just you get to have the fun of making the project and then they just feel so loved too that you thought of them to make a handmade gif which is awesome all right so we've made our buttonhole um and now we need to decide do how low do we want this where do we want this to land again what is that what is that that you're going to be looping it over and you might want to test that out before you commit to where you want to be able to put that button if you look at ours here i made mine a little bit bigger because my oven handle fits about right through there you could have yours lower if you prefer but if you like yours right about in that spot you'll just go ahead figure out where that spot is kind of just figure that out i was really comfortable going ahead and just marking through the slit with my friction pen so i knew exactly i didn't want to get off center where to go ahead and put that and i'm going to actually leave that not up on this side because it's going to be hidden you can put it on the back if you prefer but i'm going to definitely secure that a couple times and then go ahead and sew my button on just a little bit of hand sewing you could use really any needle a chenille needle richard hemming needle anything you want i've got just two layers of the pink thread that's in my machine right now just because i want strength because of course as you button and unbutton you are putting some tension on this thread so you want to definitely secure that a couple times and then tie off at least twice i always try it tie off anything that's going to have tension and be used twice and if the button comes off hey it's not a big deal to go ahead and just stitch that back on not a big deal and then we get to go ahead and close our button and we have a cute little hanging towel so if you know of a friend that would totally love to make these share them let them know about these videos you know we we do with videos for you i have a great time showing you what i've learned about making towels and all the other amazing things so share the good news you know being able to make these handmade gifts in a world that's so moving so fast i love i just love to be able to slow down and make those things that actually are not mass produced they're made with love and they're made for yourself or for gift giving so thank you for your time today we'd love to hear from you be sure to subscribe if you haven't already and i'll see you on the future shabby fabrics video [Music]

Channel: Shabby Fabrics

Views: 198,388

Rating: 4.855444 out of 5

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Id: reyu-yhr75M

Length: 44min 51sec (2691 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 11 2020