My New Quest and Paperless Paper Towels

My first and foremost quest is, of course, following God's will for my life.  That will always be of the utmost importance to me.  Recently I have become unemployed (within the last 6 months) after working 30+ years my husband, Chuck, and I decided I would stay home. I wish I had done this years ago when my  children were growing up but I didn't.  I just always thought we needed the extra income (and we did) but if I had known some of the things I do now I could have saved myself a ton of money and stayed home with my chidren. :(    

Little by little I have been purging things from my life that are not necessary or are things that I realized are of little value to me.  These are things that I don't miss that I thought I would.  I'll write about those later.  I have also learned ways of reducing our expenses and I still have a few things on my list to reduce the expenses. 

Recently I saw the cutest idea on A Blossoming Life about paperless paper towels. I thought it was the cutest idea ever and would also save me a TON of money.  Mind you, I could probably use dish towels, wash cloths or any other absorbent fabric by itself but I just like pretty things so this works for me.  It also gave me some time with my granddaughter, Morgan, so I could teach her to sew.  She absolutely loved it!  So I decided to take the leap and try to make them. 

I had a pretty cotton shower curtain that had been sitting in my linen closet that I hadn't used for a couple of years and it worked perfect for one side of the unpaper towels.  We used a couple of old worn out towels and used the parts of it that didn't have holes for the other side.  We also bought a couple of inexpensive towels at the thrift store to complete our project.  

Paperless Paper Towel Tutorial:

Materials needed (I just used what I had):

12 pieces of 11" x 11" squares of both cotton fabric and terry fabric
Thread of your choice
Velcro (this step is optional. But if you use it don't use iron-on)

Instructions:

Cut out the fabric as evenly as possible.  I cut one and kept it as a template for the rest.

Pin the right sides together and sew around all the edges using a 1/4" seam but leave a small gap at the end big enough for you to turn the fabric inside out when finished stitching.

She looks so serious!  :)  <3

Now turn the fabric right side out and iron the material flat.  Pin the gapped area closed and sew around all the edges approximately 1/4".  Now you can run a stitch through the center of the material from one corner to the opposite corner to keep the material from having all that open space in the center (I had her draw where she wanted to stitch first). This was Morgan's favorite part because she was able to be creative with her squiggly line.  :)  

Now, sew on the velcro.  Sew one piece of the same velcro on 2 corners of the same side, then sew the opposite velcro on the other side of the material on the opposite side (see picture).  We originally bought iron-on velcro but after washing, some of the velcro came off so we sewed them on. If you don't want to attach your towels together for the appearance of a roll of paper towels, you can omit the velcro and just stack them some place in a kitchen drawer or a pretty basket.  

Anyway, see how neat this is!  We love them and I can't say enough about how much the bonding time with Morgan meant to me.  Now she wants a sewing machine of her own.  :)

The towels are much prettier in person (at least that's what my niece told me).  My photography skills are greatly lacking!  :)

Take care and try this project.  It was fun and easy!

In Christ,
Tina