the hooded bath towel for baby or toddler tutorial (edited)

A friend gave me a hooded towel for my first baby. I loved it so much, since it was big enough to wrap the baby in even now that she is a full grown toddler. When I had baby #2, I wanted to make one for him, especially now that he has outgrown his newby baby bath towels. Then I saw that Sew Mama Sew was having a tutorial contest, I thought, no better time than the present and ignoring the monster quilt, I whipped one up. These are very easy and take less than 30 minutes to make--unless you are like me, and life decides to creep in. If you are really bored, you can see how in the unedited tutorial.

The Materials

1 hand towel (i used one 16 in. by 26 in.)
1 bath towel (i used one 30 in. by 54 in.)
17 in. of ribbon (or one inch longer than the length of your hand towel)
coordinating thread

The Directions

1) measure 10 inches and cut the hand towel parallel to the decorative end. hand towel measurements went from 16 x 26 inches to 16 inches x 10 inches.


2) pin ribbon on hand towel. I like it in the middle of the decorative part of the towel. I left 1/2 of an inch of ribbon at the ends of the towel to sew under the seam.

3) sew on ribbon. i did it right along the edge of the ribbon, so as not to notice the mismatched thread, but i noticed that the ribbon on the one my friend made was sewn on 1/4 of inch from the ribbon's edge, which made it kind of ruffly.

4) fold hand towel in half lengthwise, right sides together, like so:

5) sew up unfinished ends. I used a 1/4 inch seam allowance, but there is enough room for 5/8 inch.

6) I then used a fake serge (sorry, don't know the proper name for the stitch) stitch to finish off the edges. By all means, use a serger if you have access to one.

6) fold the bath towel in half widthwise like so.

7) align hood to middle of bath towel

8) pin middle of hood to middle of bath towel

9) sew hood to bath towel. since both ends are covered in bias tape, no need to worry about serging.

10) cut off excess ribbon (can burn the edges if you are worried about fraying, but the ribbon in my old one was okay without) and thread.


11) now give the kids a bath.