From Needles to Nails: Paperless Paper Towels

I've seen a lot of paperless paper towels online lately and thought I'd try my hand at making my own. I used terry towel for one side and flannelette for the other side. Rather than buying terry towel fabric I bought a package of 25 washcloths at the dollar store for $5. I went with dark coloured washcloths because I thought it would hide stains the best from wiping up messes.

For the flannel I used a combo of new fabric bought for the project and some I had in my stash. I pre-washed my fabric and washcloths before starting my project to prevent any shrinking after the fact. I also trimmed the tags off all the washcloths. The washcloths shrunk a bit which changed how I decided to put them together.

I laid the washcloths out on top of the fabric to cut the fabric to the same size, I did cut the flannelette slightly larger than the washcloths as the washcloths have a tendency to stretch as they run through the serger leaving you with not enough fabric to cover the whole square.

I pinned the two layers, fabric and washcloth, together with good sides facing out. I made sure the side of the washcloths that had a little bit of the tag still showing was facing inwards.

I ran each square through the serger with the washcloth lining up with the inside of the blade so as not to make them any smaller than they were just trimming off the excess fabric around the edges.

I serged all four sides closed shut. I decided not to turn them inside out to hide the serging because it would then make them that much smaller especially as they had already shrunk a bit when I pre-washed them. I sewed and a line from corner to corner to form an X to hold the two layers of fabric together, otherwise they tend to pull apart when wiping up messes.