Whether you’re looking to lighten your contribution to the world’s landfills or lower your household budget, unpaper towels are a smart choice. Made from super soft flannel and super absorbent terry cloth, they can handle all the household chores for which you currently turn to paper products, and then they can be thrown in the wash to be used over and over again.
If you do a search on Pinterest (my favorite place for fun DIY ideas), you’ll find tons of tutorials for making unpaper towels, many suggest sewing snaps to the corners of the towels so you can snap them together and roll them up to be stored on a paper towel holder, allowing you to conveniently unsnap one any time you have a mess that needs cleaning. I skipped this option for two reasons: First, I know my family, and I know that I would be the only one who ever bothered to snap these suckers back together and neatly roll them onto the holder. Second I use mine for dusting, and I didn’t want to have hard plastic or metal snaps on them that could possible scratch my furniture. I store mine in a kitchen drawer with my dish cloths and dish towels. They’re easy to get to and easy for anyone in the house to put away after they’re washed.
A note about using these towels as dust cloths: If you use a commercial product like Pledge for dusting, it’s best to designate a specific towel or two to this purpose. I’ve found that the product can build up in the material and cause it to be less absorbent.
Since I’ve also made these a couple of times, and I know what works for my preferences, I adjusted the size of my unpaper towels to be a little bigger than many of the tutorials suggested. I find that the size I settled on (which makes a finished 12-by-12-inch towel) is just right for any household task, but you can make your towels any size you like. In fact, you can also make these in rectangles to be used as burp cloths – just adjust the shape and size to suit your needs and then proceed with the rest of the directions.
By the same token, you can adjust the amount of fabric you buy to make more or fewer towels. I found that using a yard of each material I could make about 6 towels, depending on the width of the fabric. If you want more, just buy more yardage. Fewer? Buy less.
What you’ll need:
1 yard of soft flannel fabric
1 yard terry cloth
Coordinating thread
Cutting tools (mat, ruler, rotary cutter)
Sewing machine
Note: For most sewing projects, I would wash, dry and iron my material before beginning. I didn’t bother with those steps for this project. Prewashing and drying is meant to remove sizing from material and allow it to shrink if it’s going to.
These towels are going to be used to clean up messes around my house. At the end of the day, if they don’t come out perfect or if they shrink a little after their first wash no one is going to notice, likely not even me. I find unwashed fabric is easier to cut, so I started right in on making towels. If you feel differently, by all means, prewash, dry and iron your material before proceeding with the directions.
Steps:
Using a cutting mat, ruler and rotary cutter, cut both of your materials into as many 13-by-13-inch squares as you can. The easiest way to do this is to fold the fabric in half selvage edge to selvage edge (these are the finished edges of the material), and then fold it in half again the same way.
Make sure your fabric is smooth with no wrinkles. Align the top edge of your folded fabric with one of the horizontal lines on your cutting mat. Use your ruler and rotary cutter to cut an even edge down the short side of the fabric and then cut as many 13-inch strips as you can. Now unfold those 13-inch strips and cut them at 13-inch intervals to get squares.
Once you have all your squares cut, it’s time to sew. Because terry cloth can be a little stretchy, I found my towels stayed more even and square if I pinned three corners, leaving only the one where I started sewing unpinned. I pinned each square as I went along, but you can choose to pin all your squares at once before you start sewing if you’d rather.
Assemble your towels by pinning a square of flannel and a square of terry cloth right sides together (I’m not sure terry cloth actually has a right side, so the important part here is to make sure the backside of your flannel is showing when you pin your sandwich together), placing pins on three corners.
Starting at the corner that is not pinned, place your fabric sandwich under the presser foot on your sewing machine about half way down one side of your square and ½ inch in from the edge. Sew a ½-inch seam around the entire square, stopping about 2 inches before your starting point. Backstitch when beginning and ending to reinforce those stitches. Stopping before your starting point will leave you a 2-inch hole through which you can turn your fabric right-side out.
Using scissors or your rotary cutter, mat and ruler, cut the points off your corners, being careful not to nip any of your stitches. Doing this is not absolutely necessary, but it will remove the bulk and allow your corners to lay flatter and have better points.
Once your corners are trimmed, turn your squares right-side out through the hole you left when you were sewing. Using a pointed object, such as a wooden skewer or the handle of an artist’s paintbrush, push the corners out so that they have nice points and lay flat.
Make sure the seam allowance on the hole you left for turning is tucked in toward the inside of your fabric sandwich, and then top stitch a ¼-inch seam around the entire square. Doing this not only closes the opening, but gives your project a more finished look and prevents the fabrics from separating as you use the towel to wipe up messes.