Crafts
17 Easy DIY Ideas For Old Towels
DIY ideas for old towels: turn worn bath towels into bath mats, braided rugs, beach blankets, swim cover ups, unpaper towels and terry cloth toys.
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The towels that lose their fluff never actually get thrown away. They get demoted to the rag pile, and then they sit there. My sewing runs beginner to intermediate, learned from my mother and from a design background rather than a class, and that is exactly the level most of these DIY ideas for old towels ask for. Terry cloth hides a wobbly seam better than almost any fabric you will sew, which makes it a forgiving place to practice. So here are 17 craft ideas and step by step tutorials for old towels: bath mats and braided rugs for the bathroom floor, bibs and a bolster pillow for around the house, swim cover ups and beach blankets for summer, unpaper towels and a stay put kitchen towel for the kitchen, and a few soft toys that use nothing but scraps. Plenty of them need no sewing machine at all.
DIY Ideas for Old Towels
1. Easy Beach Towel Swim Cover Up
One beach towel, one package of extra wide double fold bias tape and two yards of quarter inch ribbon. Cut a 12 inch opening in the middle of the towel for the head, or 8 to 10 inches for a smaller child, and hem the raw edge. Then measure 14 inches down, press the bias tape open and sew it on as a casing, thread the ribbon through both sides and pull to gather. A thinner beach towel sews far more easily than a plush one. Not for children under three, because of the ribbon.
Get the full tutorial at Polka Dot Chair.
2. Old Towels Dish Mat
A padded mat for draining pots beside the sink, made from a towel with rust stains nobody will ever see because the pretty cotton faces up. That is the whole idea here: the towel is the hidden middle layer, so its condition does not matter at all. Anna at Noodlehead cut up a scuzzy old towel for hers and used the project to burn through fabric scraps at the same time. Store bought drying mats are either boring or the wrong color for the kitchen, and this one is washable and matches.
Get the full tutorial at Noodlehead.
3. DIY Unpaper Towels
Ten squares of terry cloth and ten of cotton or flannel, all 10 by 10 inches, sewn right sides together like little pillows with a three inch gap, turned, pressed and topstitched. Then a wiggly line corner to corner through the middle, which sounds decorative and is not: it stops the layers separating in the wash. Velcro squares on opposite corners let them roll up on the holder and tear off one at a time. Half a yard of each fabric makes the set. Snaps work if you have an applicator.
Get the full tutorial at A Blossoming Life.
4. Old Towel DIY Bath Pouf
Cut a strip about an inch and a half wide off one side of a towel, plus two circles traced around a random lid. Run a long straight stitch down the raw edge of the strip and pull the bobbin thread to gather it tightly, then sew it onto one circle in a spiral working from the outside in. Sandwich a finished 1.5 by 6 inch handle strip between the two circles and zigzag around the edge. Disney at Ruffles and Stuff calls it kooky, which is fair, and it still washes better than the plastic ones.
Get the full tutorial at Ruffles and Stuff.
5. Beefy Bolster Pillow from Old Towels
Roll your old beach towels up tight, the way you rolled one around a swimsuit before riding to the pool, and that roll becomes the pillow form. Wrap it in dacron and spray adhesive if you want it smoother. Trace two end circles from three quarters of a yard of fabric, notch them for alignment and stitch cording around the edges. For the tube, look up the circumference of your circle, add an inch, and cut a rectangle that by the length of the roll plus an inch. Leave at least ten inches open to stuff it, then hand stitch it closed.
Get the full tutorial at Curbly.
6. Old Towels Bath Mat
Three old bath towels, a needle, thread and scissors, and the video walks the whole thing. This is our own post, built around a step by step from Think Big Boss, and it is the one to reach for when your towels have stains but the terry itself is still good. Strips get cut and worked into a mat thick enough that your feet stay dry, which is more than most thin store bought bath mats manage. It is also the least fussy project on this page, because there is no pattern and no machine involved.
Get the full tutorial at Sueeye.
7. DIY Towel Wrap
A towel wrap you can actually walk around the house in, with a closure at the top so it stays up without a hand holding it. It is a remix of a Sew4Home pattern, and the changes are the interesting part: a ruffle in place of the binding, no shoulder straps, and the towel serged and folded over only once rather than twice to keep the bulk down. You need a yard of terry cloth, sixteen to twenty inches of non roll elastic, velcro and a scrap of fabric. The elastic goes across the back, which is what gives the snug fit.
Get the full tutorial at Sisters of the Wild West.
8. Handmade Baby Toys
Babies play with the tags, so the tags become the toy. Two circles of yellow terry, cut from an old towel or a face cloth, with fifteen ribbon loops five inches long folded shiny side out and basted a quarter inch from the edge before you sew the halves together. Eyes and cheeks are fused on with Heat N Bond and satin stitched. Deby’s tip is the useful one: terry drags on the machine, so sew the applique over a sheet of printer paper and tear it away after. Stuff lightly. The free template downloads from her pattern store.
Get the full tutorial at So Sew Easy.
9. DIY Towel Elephant
Folded, not sewn, which makes this the one project here a child can do beside you. A washcloth or hand towel, a rubber band or a length of ribbon, and a folding sequence turns flat terry into an elephant with ears and a trunk. It is the same move as the towel animals left on a cruise ship bed, and it makes a genuinely good baby shower centerpiece or party favor. The page credited here is a collection of links rather than a tutorial, so the actual instructions sit one click further on, at Aspen Jay and Crafty Sue.
Get the full tutorial at i Creative Ideas.
10. Bountiful Beach Blankets
Two large beach towels cut in half gives four squares, and those four squares sewn together give one beach blanket big enough for a family. Colleen used two Ikea towels at about seven dollars each that were honestly too heavy for towels, which is exactly why they work as a blanket. Her seam is the part to copy: sew right sides together, press the seam open, then run a tricot stitch down both sides of the seam line on the velvety face. That keeps the seam flat underneath you and stops the terry raveling. The outside edges are already hemmed.
Get the full tutorial at My Material Life.
11. Towel Bath Rugs DIY
A shag bath rug knotted onto latch rug canvas, no sewing machine anywhere. Wash and dry your towels first, measure the floor space you want to cover, then cut the canvas to size. Strips go about three quarters of an inch wide, cut down into five to six inch lengths, and get knotted along the grid all facing the same direction. Two to three old bath towels cover an 18 inch by two foot rug. Knot every line for a thick plush mat, every other line for a thinner one. Fine Craft Guild is straight about it: low concentration, long, worth it.
Get the full tutorial at Fine Craft Guild.
12. DIY Towel Teddy Bear Tutorial
No sewing, no glue and no pattern, just rolling, folding and a couple of rubber bands. A square towel rolls in from both edges to the middle, folds up into a bear with a head, ears and stubby arms, and holds its shape well enough to sit on a shelf or top a wrapped gift. Ribbon or jute twine works in place of the elastic. It is the towel animal trick hotels use on a turned down bed, and it is the fastest thing on this whole page, which makes it a good one to hand a child while you sew something that needs concentration.
Get the full tutorial at Sueeye.
13. Stay Put Kitchen Towel
If your kitchen towel spends more time on the floor than on the oven handle, this fixes it permanently. Three fabric strips get sewn across a prewashed kitchen towel. The top two are stitched only along their long edges, leaving the short sides open so each becomes a tube; the bottom strip is decorative and sewn on all four sides. Measure around your own oven handle first, because that spacing decides where the ribbon ties land. Two yards of ribbon threads through with a safety pin, and touching the cut ends to a flame stops them fraying in the wash.
Get the full tutorial at Pin. Sew. Press.
14. DIY Towel Bibs
Baby bibs in bulk, with two things worth knowing before you start. First, avoid microfiber towels entirely: one set made from them attracts every piece of lint in the house. Second, cut all the towels at once and work in stages, because an assembly line beats one at a time by a mile. An old plate sets the circle size, folded in half so the neck opening is even, and placed to leave room at the back for the shoulders. The first bib came out with a loose neck, so trim the ribbing shorter than feels right before you sew.
Get the full tutorial at The Project Corner.
15. Towel To Poolside Robe
Two yards of elastic, some iron on velcro and a towel you have stopped using. Fold the top long edge over half an inch, then over again by an inch, and pin the whole length to make a casing. Wrap the elastic around your chest, cut where the ends meet, thread it through with a diaper pin so it cannot pop open inside the casing, and sew both ends down. Iron the velcro on with a heavy cloth over it, then sew small vertical lines through it so it survives washing. If your towel is striped and you want the stripes vertical, cut it in half and seam it.
Get the full tutorial at Grosgrain.
16. Braided Rug
Three stained bath towels that were otherwise fine became this. Fold each towel in half, cut into strips an inch and a half wide, then sew three strips together, one of each color, and braid. Fold the raw edges to the inside as you go, which is the step that keeps it from fraying later. When you run out, sew on another set and keep braiding until you have one enormous rope. Then twist the center, coil it around, and hand stitch the rows together on the back with a heavy duty needle. She did all of it without a rotary cutter.
Get the full tutorial at Sisters of the Wild West.
17. Terry Cats
A soft toy cat sewn from one towel, with a free pattern. Unpick the short side of the towel first, because the part without pile becomes the inside of the ears. Draw the pattern pieces on, cut with a half to eight tenths of a centimeter seam allowance, then sew the face center, the back center and the ear line. Stuff softly with polyester fiberfill, and you can drop plastic pellets into the paws so it sits properly. Embroider the eyes instead of using buttons if this is for a small child. How much you stuff it is what gives each one its expression.
Get the full tutorial at Cloth Doll Making.
