You know when you’re walking through a store and you pass by an item, maybe it’s kitschy, maybe it looks knitted, maybe you just love it and you say, “pft. I could make that” and then refuse to pay whatever amount they’re asking for because you’re certain you can make it? Well, you’re in great company because I say this ALL. THE. TIME. I also almost NEVER actually make the thing or if I do, I spend WAY more than it would have cost me. In a way I guess that’s still fine because I do love making things.
For the inaugural post I’m starting off a bit easy with how to make your own shower wrap. I found this super duper cute pink and rainbows shower wrap at my local Meijer store.
It’s really cute right? I mean, can you go wrong with rainbows and pink? There were loads of other super cute designs also available. I saw that it was $12.99 and I scoffed and said, “I’m not paying $12.99 for that,” and then the lightbulb went off! I knew I was wanting to start this series and this could be my first item! My mind immediately went to “how cheap can I make this” and I toured the aisles of towels to find a towel that would cost significantly less. I decided that the towel didn’t need to be super absorbent or really even soft. Although both of those would have been great but they were in boring neutral colors and I wanted something fun like the pink shower wrap.
So I found this teal towel but I knew it would be a little short in the wrapping part for me, being a seamstress I know my measurements and knew I wanted a bit of overlap for this wrap. I could have gotten a bigger towel, but again, nothing in a real fun color for me.
So I circled around to the kitchen towels and found this coordinating towel. Which was pretty perfect in my mind. It’s not rainbows but it’s designed and fun! It also won’t be as long as my big towel (you’ll see what I mean in a moment per pictures) but I figured I could always add scrap fabric or scrap towel, whatever.
From this picture below you can also see in my very detailed research of the item I claim I can make, it has velcro. I wasn’t sure if I had velcro but was going on a hunch that I might.
Haha. Me: “Not sure I have velcro” Also Me:
So before I get too ahead of myself I took my purchases home and pre-washed them. For anyone who doesn’t know, you want to prewash fabrics you plan on washing again after they’ve been sewn. Some items can have different amounts of cotton so the shrinkage will occur at different rates/degrees and you wouldn’t want to end up with puckering.
Once they were washed and dried I laid them side by side and pinned them. I decided to put my kitchen towel on top and I did a bit of an overlap here but it was more so I could sew in the gap between the two thick edge seams of each towel.
Now I just sewed a simple straight line to sew these two pieces together. Then I tried it on and placed a pin where the wrap ended so I would know where to put my velcro. I did decide to make my velcro go past this pin so if I lost weight or someone slightly thinner than myself was using it they could. I also made sure to use the softer velcro on the part that would be exposed all the time, the underneath velcro if you will. Because if I brush up against any velcro that I haven’t velcroed on I’d like to not get scratched. So the top piece of velcro is the scruffy one. I also decided to make my top scruffy velcro shorter than the bottom one. Think of it like an airplane and a runway. The runway is the soft velcro and is long, the airplace is scruffy and short and has lots of runway to land on.
So to reiterate scruffy side goes on the wrong side of the top part of the wrap – in my case it’s the kitchen towel. The soft velcro side goes on the right side of the towel where the scruffy part can meet it!
There you have it! That’s how I made the shower wrap. I did realize after looking at these pictures again I should have probably added a casing and elastic to the back part of the towel but honestly it felt like it was staying on fine when I was wearing it! I also want to point out that the shower wrap I could have purchased says, “One size fits most” and while they’re probably capturing a large percent of people, it isn’t helping those who are thinner than the intended audience or larger than that audience. I can say with confidence that I feel comfortable in my shower wrap and wouldn’t have an issue wearing it in front of others as I pass by to get to my room. I do live with my husband and infant son, so I don’t really have to worry about offending anyone right now though haha. But it’d be great on vacation, at the beach etc. I think it’d be great for people going to college and using co-ed bathrooms too!
Also for those keeping track I spent about $8 and an hour of my time. The cost was for the towels alone as I already had thread and apparently a lot of velcro! I probably could have done this for $0 if I had chosen two towels – bath and kitchen or bath and bath since we do have extra towels and ones that don’t get used as often. 🤷♀️ I really like my teal shower wrap!
Another side note, if I were to make this again I could see me making it with an elastic back and using two bath towels. Also, you could totally make this with Beach Towels and I have no idea why I didn’t search those out! 😭
I hope y’all enjoy this new series! Let me know what you thought with the shower wrap! Do you plan on making one yourself? Maybe as a gift for someone? Be sure to tune in next Monday, I’m really excited to get started on that one!
xoxo
-Robin
