Flashback-Hooded Towel Poncho

It's moving week here! We are heading to beautiful Bend on Friday to start our year externship at the hospital so that my husband will finally be done with school! So that means a little break from blogging while I get the rest of the house packed and cleaned all while taking care of my babies and saying goodbye to pretty much the best friends ever! Rough week for us, but hopefully some of these old flashbacks are things you may have missed or forgotten about...

Thanks for reading, and I promise to be back soon with all new and fun stuff! If you have a tutorial to share-especially if it's something fun for the summer-send me an email and we'll get it up and featured!

xoxo

Tiff

Today's Flashback is Hooded Towel Ponchos-

originally posted June of last year

My kids wear these just out of the tub, pool, lake and ocean. They've held up awesome after all of that and all the washings, and my kids still love them. The pockets get filled with bath toys, sea shells, rocks, sunscreen, goggles, bubbles and all manner of things so be sure to check them before you wash them! Begin flash back NOW!

I wanted to make some new towel ponchos for the kids for the beach, and decided to add a hood this time just to make them a little more cozy-and my kids love them.

This is one I made for my friends little girl for her birthday-my daughter is super stoked to be modeling it isn't she?

She was sad that it wasn't hers...she isn't sad now that she has her own. :)

Here is the tutorial...

1. Fold your towel in half, (if your towel has a wrong side, then fold it wrong side out) and cut a slit in the middle for the head hole.
   
   
2. Fold the slit over and pin it down, on one side only.
   
   
3. Next take a cut in half hand towel, take the raw edge of the back of the circle and the edge of the hand towel and put them together-center the hand towel with the circle. Fold the hand towel over, folding the edge of the circle over as well and pin it the rest of the way around the circle.
   
   
4. You will have some hand towel left over on both sides of the circle once you are done pinning, just keep pinning around the front.
   
   
5. Then just sew around the edges with a zig zag stitch, I went over it again with a straight stitch, just to be sure it was good and sewn down.
   
   
6. When you turn the towel inside out, you will have the raw edges inside, and you'll see the beginnings of the hood.
   
   
7. Fold the hand towel backwards all the way to the seam and pin in place-then sew the edges together.
   
   
8. Turn the hood inside out and your towel poncho could be complete...unless...
   
   
9. ...you want to add cute pockets-which you do right? :) Take a wash cloth and cut it in half this way.
   
   
10. I had some dark brown canvas that I was using for another project, so I cut a chunk out of it. You could use whatever fabric you wanted, I like that the canvas is heavy, I think it will hold up a little better.
    
    
11. Then I cut out initials for each of my 3 kiddos for one pocket.
    
    
12. And their choice of sea animal for the other.
    
    
13. Then I just sewed them on to the front of the pockets.
    
    
14. I hand sewed the buttons on.
    
    
15. And here they are all done.
    
    
16. Take the back flap of the pocket and pin the tops where you want them and sew them on.
    
    
17. Then fold the pockets up, pin them up, tuck the raw edge in and pin them up, and then sew them down the sides and on the bottoms. Just to warn you, you will want to use a stronger needle for this part-I broke a couple weaker ones...but its all worth it.

As you can see, it is a one size fits all kind of thing for kids, I moved the pockets up according to height so that they could reach them-they are all super excited, and want to wear them all day long.

Success.

Check out these cute sites to make your world cuter!