Pleated Kitchen Towel

I'm linking up to Kimba's DIY day:

After I got so much bloggy love for my pleated pillow, I started to look at pleats in a whole new light. I suddenly thought everything needed pleats.

This week I added pleats to the bottom of a towel I hang in my kitchen, just because.

Super easy, here's what I did:

1. I wanted my pleats to be about 2" long. I needed a bit more for seam allowance, then doubled it. I cut strips of fabric 5" from selvage to selvage-



2. Fold and press the selvage ends 1/4" long.






3. Fold in half (hot dog way) and press.




4. Find center and mark with a pin. Mark 1" away from center. Keep marking until you get to the end. I used a marker.




5. Fold lines to meet: If you were to number the 1" marks "1, 2, 3,....," then mark #1 would meet the center, mark #3 would meet mark #2, mark #5 would meet mark #4 and so on. Press pleats as you go.















6. Sew pleats to the bottom of the towel. I pin at every pleat. I had planned to sew 1/4" allowance, but decided to just sew right above the hem of the towel. When I was pinning, I noticed that my pleats were longer than the towel. I just cut it off about 1/4" longer than the towel, folded those edges in and sewed. Finish the edges of the pleats. You could do this before you even started ironing, but I forgot. I pushed the towel out of the way and zigzagged the edges.








7. Press towards the towel and stitch.
   

For extra fun, I monogrammed "yum" - my daughter's idea. My whole house is browns, creams, whites - you know neutrals. I love the colors of the cream towel. But, for extra fun, I did the same thing on a white towel with a fun polka dot pleat. Just depends on the look you want.

Hang it in your kitchen and smile with all the compliments you receive. I have about a million friends who have just had or are having a birthday within a 2 week span. How cute will this be with a new bowl and salad tongs

For those of you non-sewers, I have some extra that I've added to my empty etsy shop. Hopefully, I'll get that up by tonight. Now that school is starting again, I think I might take some time to add things in there. I think.