Sew a simple (but awesome!) dress out of towels

Summary

Ever looked at a stack of old towels and thought, "you know what, that could be a dress"? No? Just me? Well, buckle up, because in this one I turn two bath towels, two hand towels, and a couple of washcloths into a soft, comfy dress and a matching zipper bag — no pattern, no fancy skills, just a whole lot of straight stitching (and a truly unhinged amount of "zoop zoop zoop"). If you can sew a straight line, you can absolutely make this.

• What you need: two big towels, two hand towels, and (for the matching bag) two washcloths, plus a zipper, bias tape, and thread.
• The only skill required: a straight stitch. That's it. Promise.
• The trick that saves your sanity: trace a dress that already fits you instead of measuring armpit depth and width — just trace and go.
• Finishing touches: a bias-tape neckline, waist ties, and a little pressing to make everything look polished.
• Bonus: turn the leftover washcloths into a zippered bag with three straight stitches and a strap.

Transcript

Hi. Hello. Let's make a towel dress together. This one is super easy. You need two big towels, two hand towels, and if you want the matching bag, two washcloths also. All you need to know how to do is a straight stitch. And from there, it's pretty freaking easy. I'm going to try to do this audio in one cut to save myself some editing time. So, fingers crossed I can do this. Okay. What you see here is me tracing a dress that fits me really well. I'm using dots to show where the dress ends and then lines to show where I should do the cutting for my seam allowance. This is a shortcut that makes life a lot easier because then you're not so worried about, well, what's my actual armpit depth and width? You just trace and go.

After that, I needed to figure out how we would get those sleeves to affix to the body of the dress. So, I did some tracing, some cutting, some praying, a lot of that. And then, uh, you pin the template to your garment, or your future garment, I should say, and you cut the whole thing out. So, here I'm cutting the front. Now, I'm going to cut the back. I'm also going to do a lot of folding and lining up and trying to make sure that things are symmetrical on both sides. That's what you see here is making the sleeves identical. Laid it out. Love the way it looked. I'm definitely into this. So, now it's time to start sewing. Oh, no, it's not. I'm still adjusting. So, I'm going to fix this neck a little bit. Make the back scoop down a little more. Make the front scoop out a little more. I was making this dress for a friend and she wanted a boat neck. So, we didn't have to worry so much about like making it a perfect circle. It just had to be a nice scoop.

Then, we sew together the shoulders and then we sew down the side. You can do this with just a straight stitch. I probably used an overlock because I like that one a lot. I feel like it holds the ends together really nicely. Uh, so montage of me sewing. Man, montage of me cussing when I break a needle. And we just keep going. All the way down the sides. New angle. All the way down that other side. Keeping those lines or those edges lined up nicely. You should probably have it all pinned into place. Sometimes I don't though. Uh, and then what are we doing? More zooping. It is truly the longest montage of zoop zoop zoop you've ever seen in your life. And I would like to apologize for that, but we've gone too far. Now I'm pinning the sleeves to the armpit holes. I like to do this by putting the sleeve inside out inside the body of the dress. And then when it's attached, you can just pull it out and everything makes sense. That probably doesn't make sense yet, but if you watch here, I am doing all the way around the armpit holes. [snorts] And then Nope. Nope. Maybe. Where are we? We are lining up edges. And [snorts] then we are all the way around. And then you're going to hold it up. See if you like it so far. Do I like it? I think I like it.

Now, let's do the neck. Okay, hold on. Bias tape. Neck lines. This is the easiest way. You pin it to the edge with the open side facing the neck hole and on the right side. So, the cute side of the garment. And then you're going to stitch all the way down that first little line, keeping it right there along the edge. Again, this is on the outside of what will become your dress. You're going to joop all the way around. Nice and neat. We love it. It's looking good. This part is so tedious because I want it to be absolutely perfect. I have the straight stitch foot on to really like help me focus on staying in that line. So once you make it all the way around, [snorts] you are going to take it back over to your ironing board and you are going to do a little pressing. So here it is. is I flipped it inside out and I'm pressing down the bias tape onto the inside and then I'm all the way around that edge on the inside. So now it is uh no raw edges essentially. Okay, got it in place. I did one more press and then I added another stitch line right there where you can barely see it. I just feel like that second line makes it look a lot more finished.

Now it's time for the try on. It's looking good. I want to add some waist ties. So, I'm marking where my waist is. And I'm hoping that my friend who this is for has a waist in the same place as me. Uh, all right. Yep, that feels right. So, what I'm doing here is I'm taking bias tape and I'm running a zigzag stitch all the way down it just to kind of reinforce it. And these are going to become my ties. They're going to go on the inside with just a quick little zoop. And there you go. Now we have ties. Of course, the bobbin ran out right before the last tie, which is the last step. That's just that's the rule of sewing. Once you get that on, maybe now you're like, "Oh, do I want pockets on this dress?" I don't want pockets on this dress. I would like to instead make a bag out of those pockets. I mean, out of those washcloths. So, here's what the bag looks like when it's done. It's literally just three straight stitches and a zipper. Uh, let me show you how to do that.

So, you will take your two washcloths and your zipper. You'll move over to your sewing machine, put the zipper face down on the outside cute side of your fabric, and do a straight stitch all the way down that very edge like this. Then, you're going to open it up and do a top stitch, holding uh holding the fabric a little bit closer to the zipper itself to make it slightly more invisible. This isn't an invisible zipper. We just don't want it to be an obvious zipper. You know what I'm saying? Then you're going to take your first piece. You are going to put it on top of your second piece face down with the outside back of the zipper lined up with the edge of that second piece. And then you're going to do a straight stitch all the way down that second piece. flip it open and do a top stitch just like you did on the other side. And then you'll see you've got a nice little zipper that works.

Now you're going to zoop zoop zoop around those three edges. And then maybe you also want to go ahead and cut yourself a strap. I used some scraps and I just gave a couple straight stitches all the way down on both sides to reinforce it. Oops. At some point I stopped recording. But you attach the handle right behind the zipper. And that's it. It's that easy. Oh, what's in the bag? What's in here? I can feel something. I don't see it. Where? Oh, there it is. I'm just kidding. But it's really that easy. You just make some sleeves, you make a body, you make a dress, and you're beautiful. All set in the bag. Win-win. Okay, now have a great day. I love you. Goodbye.

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