DIY Reusable Kitchen Cloths Tutorial | Easy Beginner Sewing Project

If you're looking for a quick scrap busting project that is also super useful and handy around your home, I've got the perfect project for you. Friends, I'm Brittany, the mom and maker behind Ginger Patch Designs, and today's free tutorial is kitchen rags, towels, I'm not really sure what everybody calls them. They are kitchen dish towels and cleaning rags. And if you're wondering why you would bother making them instead of buying them, you can custom make whatever fabric you want on them to make them pretty. You can make them to match whatever vibe of your kitchen you have. They are great gifts. You can make a whole stack and give them as a gift. And they are very durable. I've had mine for a few years. I've had mine for a few years now, and they have enough texture to actually clean the surface, but they won't scratch. They're not too abrasive to scratch anything. And they're eco-friendly. You can make a whole stack and just throw them in the washing machine as you use them. First time I made these, I was in a hurry. I just wanted something in my kitchen really, really quickly. And so I literally just slapped two pieces together, sewed them, and called it a day. But this is the problem. It doesn't bother me personally, but if you were to gift these to someone else or to sell them, that's just not very pretty. And you can see that it causes the edges to be just puffed up. It's ugly. And excuse the dinginess of my dishcloth. This is very well used, and it's been used for a few years now. But even after a few years of use, it is just now starting to pill a little bit, like some stringies coming off. And so they are very durable and last a very long time. And you can see here, this is roughly what they started looking like. This is a smaller size that I made for dishes, or you can definitely tell this one has been used on cast iron because it's very dingy. I like how they're durable, but they're not too abrasive to use on your cast iron, and they're not gonna scratch what you don't wanna scratch. You can make these literally whatever size you want. These are about an eight inch. I actually don't even think they're square. It's like an eight by nine. But I'm going to make the larger size that I prefer for cleaning bathrooms and just wiping down counters, which is a 10 by 10. You also need a 100% cotton towel. This is from Walmart. It's the Walmart brand, but they have a few different kinds. Make sure you get the 100% cotton because the texture is different. It's, I think it was $6. You can buy terry cloth by the yard at fabric stores or online, but it is so much cheaper just to go to Walmart or Target or wherever and get a towel. You can get several dishcloths or even a few dish mats out of this as well. So to make this fit on my table, I'm just gonna kind of fold it over evenly a little bit. It's got this ribbing right here, so I'm just gonna line that up so that I'm cutting it evenly. So to use a bathroom towel as terry cloth, you're just going to square it up by cutting off the trim on the outside of the towel and then cut off the ribbing. But I do not throw away this part of the towel. This is still a useful part if you wanted to make the smaller pieces like this for just smaller cleaning or dishes. If not, you can throw it away. I'm going to straighten this up the best that I can. Terry cloth's a little tricky to work with. It shifts a lot. So like every time you move it on your table, you need to make sure you even it out a little bit. If it is not completely square, that is completely okay. Friends, if you're new here, I do have several free tutorials here on my YouTube channel. I will link that playlist down below for you. But I also have a beginner-friendly sewing pattern coming out in just a few days after this video post. It is the quilted Charlotte tote bag. And when I say beginner-friendly, I am literally holding your hand, walking you through each step so you don't get confused. You can learn with confidence. I explain the whys behind I'm having you do each step so you can learn as you go. And if you are not a beginner, the Charlotte tote bag is very customizable for experienced sewists. So make sure you come back to check out that tutorial and pattern on Thursday, January 22nd. I would recommend giving your Terry cloth a good shake over the garbage can before you start working with it. There's a lot of little pieces that come off, but if you're worried about fraying, that's not going to be an issue once the product is finished. So grab one of your pieces of Terry cloth. It really doesn't matter which side it's on because both sides are pretty much the same. And then grab one of your squares, however big you cut your square. And we're going to put the pretty side, right sides down. So flip it over and line it up evenly with the square and grab your quilt clips. After you've got it clipped, you're going to take your ruler. I'm going to move this clip down just a little bit. And it really doesn't matter where you mark your opening because all sides are equal. But what you don't want to do is make your opening too close to the edge of a corner. I like to do mine either centered or just off to the side right here, but you're going to mark a two inch opening for you to stitch around. So wherever you marked your opening, you're going to start stitching here, backstitch with a one quarter inch seam allowance, stitch all the way around. And you're going to stop at this other mark that you made and backstitch. I usually recommend using cotton thread with cotton fabrics. However, I am using polyester because polyester is a lot durable and these are going to be used very heavily for cleaning in the home. They're not meant to stay pretty. They're meant to last. And allegedly polyester is also more resistant to like mildew and buildup and stuff. So with a quarter inch seam allowance, just backstitch at the beginning of that opening. Now again, terry cloth is very fickle sometimes and it likes to shift. It's got some stretchiness to it. So I just like to smooth down the fabric as I'm stitching. With these fingers, I'm holding the top layer in place with the bottom layer to keep it from shifting. And then this one, I'm just guiding it along. And make sure you backstitch when you get to that second mark that you made. This is one of the most forgiving projects you're ever going to do. If there was some shifting, you can leave it. You can snip it. It really doesn't matter. What you don't want to do is snip too close to your seams. As long as you don't do that, you'll be fine. Oh, and also if you're new here, we just chuck all the threads in the floor around here. What you do want to do is on all four corners, we're going to make notches. I love notches. If you're not new to my channel, you know this. So to make a notch on a corner, we're going to snip off the edge. And then I like to hold the scissors like this and do not get too close to your seams. We're just going to make little snips on either side of that corner that we snipped off. We're going to do this for all of the edges. This is going to poke out the corners nice and neat. I love a good notch. Okay, after you do your notches and you shamelessly throw all the threads in the floor, find your opening and stick your finger in there. And I just go to the opposite side, grab it with my fingers and gently pull it out. This is why the backstitching was so important. Again, this is very forgiving. If they rip, we'll fix it. We're already almost finished. So with your finger on the inside of the opening, just poke out all those corners. And look how nicely that corner came out with the notching. Poke out all your corners. I just realized this fabric has blue strawberries on it. That is so cute. This is actually a really great fabric for spring coming up. These are actually customizable to where you could have different fabrics for different purposes in your house. Like you could have this fabric for the kitchen. You could have another fabric for the bathroom so that you don't cross-contaminate. You can have another one just for your skillets. So after you've given that a good finger press down, just press down all the edges. You should, for the most part, just see the pretty side of the fabric facing up. If it looks kind of like that, try to make it more even on the seam if you can. If you try to do that and it's not laying flat, that means there was like extra shifting while you were sewing. Again, this is gonna be very heavily used for cleaning. If you don't care, you can just leave it like that and top stitch it here in just a minute, or you can turn it wrong side out again and pick the stitches. So for the opening, we're gonna fold both sides in on themselves, just like that, and press. So we're gonna take this to our machine and do a lot of top stitching. Now, again, when I first made mine, notice how the edges look like this. They're all like bent over, and then we have this problem with all this free space in the middle. So we're gonna take care of that by putting a top stitch all around the border and an X through the middle, again, with a quarter-inch seam allowance. So if you are watching this and you have the brain to figure this out, I'm embarrassed to say that I could not. I was trying to figure out a way to show you how to do all the way around the border and the X without breaking the seam. Couldn't figure it out. So if you can, please, by all means, share with the class in the comments, because I cannot. So we're going to start up here at the corner, backstitch. Gonna close up that opening, turn again. Now, with the needle down, never try to turn your fabric unless your needle is depressed or all the way down. So this is where we started, and we sewed a big U all the way around. So with your needle down, pick up your presser foot and shift it to where now we can sew a diagonal line across the piece here. Now, we're gonna eventually be making an X across the piece to keep that fabric from being able to pull away from the terry cloth, like on the original ones that I made. Stitch. So we just finished our X here. All we have left is this side and making the rest of our X down this way. Gonna snip that off if you have it. Pull your thread out so you don't get a bird's nest. So just in case newbies are watching, this is the open side that we haven't sewn yet, and I'm gonna start up here at the corner. Needle down, pick up your presser foot and shift. Also, if you're a beginner watching this, this is a very beginner-friendly tutorial, but just know that usually for such a small piece, if we're sewing diagonal lines like this and we're not following the seam allowance lines right here, we can sew a straight stitch from that distance. But if this was a much larger project, we would make some scoring lines or pencil marks to make sure our lines are not squiggly. Friends, after you snip the threads, that's it. It's finished. Now the top is tacked down to the backing, so when you're cleaning and you're picking it up and moving it around, it's not cumbersome. It's useful and practical and can be a workhorse in your kitchen. The smaller one is very similar process to the larger one. Now, this original one that's really wrinkly that I also did not tack down in the middle, I did it four-inch squares, but I always wish that they were just a little bit bigger. And so for today's tutorial, I cut these squares at 4 1⁄2 inches. So you're gonna want 4 1⁄2 inches of cotton fabric and then 4 1⁄2 inches of the terry cloth and then right sides down clip. And then you're gonna wanna measure two-inch opening again. Make sure that you center this two inches away from the corners. You don't want them too close to the corners because it gets messy when you're turning it right side out. On the left side marking, you're gonna backstitch, sew your U all the way around and then backstitch at your right side mark. And carefully make your notches just like you did with the bigger one. And then a little trick for turning right side out, instead of like grabbing for straight back, go for a corner. And for some reason, it just seems to wiggle out better when you go for a corner instead of the center. Poke out your corners. I just love what a notch does to a corner. Now, just like with our big one, we're gonna start on the right side corner, sew a U and then sew diagonal cut. And then we're gonna go back up here, start your stitch here, go across and then finish the diagonal X. So you can see we did our U and then across. Now I'll put it right back up here. We're gonna stitch down and across. And that's it. And pull your thread out so you don't get a bird's nest. Friends, this stack is a great anything occasion gift stack. We do have Mother's Day coming up in a few months, birthdays, holidays, whatever it is. And it is very cost-effective and people love them. Friends, I really enjoyed sewing with you today. If you will just give this video a like and subscribe and I will see you soon. Bye.