un-paper towels (a quick tutorial)

Hello friends, I hope 2018 is off to a good start for you all!

I'm not a fan of new year's resolutions as I tend to break them almost as soon as I think them up :),  but I did decide to focus more on producing less waste this year. My whole family is on board (which makes even small changes a lot more doable) and our first task is to work on reducing the amount of paper and plastic products we use in our kitchen.

To start things off, I decided to replace our paper towels with a bunch of fabric un-paper towels. I came across quite a few suggestions on how to make these - some were just plain fabric, others had little snaps or grommets attached. In the end I went with a simple combination of cotton fabric and terry cloth, not adding any hardware as I worried that it might scratch my dishes or counters.

I used some pretty fabric that's been sitting in my stash for far too long to make these. I even had some terry cloth on hand so the whole process was super quick and very, very satisfying.

We've been using these towels for about two weeks now and so far so good. I still keep a roll of paper towels in case we experience some super messy spills, but right now they are placed inside the cabinet instead of sitting on top as usual to help us remember to reach for fabric towels first. 
 

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In case you'd like to make some un-paper towels of your own here's how I made mine:

I used 1 - 10'' square of fabric and 1 - 10'' square of terry cloth for each towel, placed them right sides together and pinned around the perimeter. I then used 1/2'' seam allowance to stitch all the way around the edges leaving a 4'' opening in one side for turning. I pressed open the seam with an opening, and turned the towel right side out through the hole. I then pushed the corners out to make them nicely pointy and pinned the opening closed. I used 1/8'' seam allowance to stitch all the way around the edges of each un-paper towel stitching the opening in the side closed at the same time. I gave them all one last good press and that was it. Easy peasy.




I'm definitely planning on making a lot more of these un-paper towels in the next few days. And, I think I'll be using darker fabrics to help hide some stains this time :)


Thanks for reading friends. Svetlana