Super Hero Hooded Bath Towels

I love big hooded bath towels.  I have tried some other patterns, but they were so complicated and took forever.  A few months ago I was staying as my sis Jenni's house and she had a great hooded towel that she received as a gift.  The hood fit a toddlers head without covering the eyes and was simple.  So of course, I started investigating every seam and figured... I can do that.  So here it is.

To sew 2 towels you will need 2 bath towels and 1 hand towel. 

Start by cutting the hand towel into two long pieces like this:

Next, fold each piece of the hand towel in half so you have a piece that is more like a square:

Then sew down the cut edge.  I used my new serger (cause it was new and I needed a good excuse to use it), but you can sew it on a regular sewing machine with a seam allowance of 1/4 inch. 

Next step gives your hood a rounded shape.  You need to open up the hood so the top is folded to look like a triangle, then sew across the top of the triangle so that you cut off about 1 1/2-2 inches of it creating a flat top.  (If not using a serger that cuts the top off for you, you will have to cut the extra off so you have a 1/4 inch seam allowance.  I would do it after you sew it.)

Now the hood is complete, you just need to measure it to see how long it needs to be... bring in the model and put the hood on their head.

Then using my fingers I measured where i needed to cut the hood so that it would fit on the towel wrapped around him at his shoulders.

Then cut the bottom off the hood at your mark.

And pin the hood to the center of the long side of the towel.

Then sew the hood on and... you're done!  Okay, I am just kidding... you are only done if you want a plain boring towel and we are making super hero towels :)  So to decorate them I decided to do a simple stencil of my husbands two favorite super heroes, The Punisher and Batman, using freezer paper stencils and spray fabric paint.

Start by finding the picture you want to use and making it the size you want.  Because the towels are large, I made my images so big I had to piece them together with multiple 8 1/2 x 11 sheets of paper.

 

Then trace it onto freezer paper and cut it out.

Then iron the stencil onto the towel.

I used Tulip Fabric Spray paint in white for the Punisher and in black for Batman. 

Spray the paint all over the design being careful not to let it spray outside of the freezer paper (if you don't have a lot of space around the stencil, tape some paper to the edges to catch the over spray of the paint).  The white was hard to cover because you had to add a lot of layers and it made the outside of the towel stiff, but the inside was perfectly soft.

Let the paint dry overnight, then remove the freezer paper stencil.  Be careful when you pull it off so you don't snag any of the terry loops.

And now you are done!  And your boys will be able to save the day, one bath at a time :)