Our towels were forever falling off the oven handle so I decided to make some towel holders and of course, I had to do a cat themed one!
I got the idea for the applique from this adorable cat quilt I found on Pinterest.
This towel holder has a rod inside so that the towel can be swapped out. I didn’t want to make a towel holder that was permanently attached to the towel because I really did not want to have to make a towel holder for every single one of my kitchen towels. This seemed like a more efficient solution to my towel woes.
Materials:
- 4 colors of felt – orange or brown for main color of cat, pink for ears, white for eyes, grey for the wall
- 7″ plastic or wooden rod – I cut up a hanger to get my rods
- 1 piece of 10″ x 7″ fabric for the front
- 1 piece of fusible fleece about 11″ x 8″ (found in the interfacing section at Jo-Anns or you can use regular interfacing)
- 1 piece of backing fabric about 11″ x 8″
- 1 piece of 10″ x 2.5″ fabric to make loops for the rod – this won’t show so any fabric will do
- 1 package of extra wide double fold bias tape
- 2 large snaps
- Black acrylic paint or black puffy paint
- Fabric glue
- Hotglue
You’ll need a 7″ rod to hang the towel on. I took a hacksaw to a plastic hanger to get my rods.
Now make a fabric sandwich with the backing fabric, the fusible fleece, and front fabric. Pin the layers together.
Quilt the fabric – that means stitch all the layers together. I chose to do a criss cross pattern for my towel holder.
I like the look of quilting but you can skip the quilting step and use interfacing instead. You just need to put something in the middle to give the towel holder a bit of stiffness.
Trim all the layers to match the top layer. You should end up with a 7″ x 10″ rectangle.
Cut out the cat applique shapes using the PDF pattern. You want to use the cat colored felt for all the pieces except for the inner ear pieces which are pink.
Cut a 1.5″ x 7″ strip of grey felt for the wall. Glue the wall down onto your quilted piece.
Glue the cat pieces down next.
You don’t have to do this step but I wanted to make sure the cat applique didn’t come off so I zigzagged around all the edges.
Now use the acrylic paint (or puffy paint pen) and draw a pair of eyes on the white felt.
Cut out eyes and glue them to the cat. Draw on the nose, mouth, and whiskers.
Finish the edges using the bias tape. I like to make my own bias tape but that’s usually because I’m too lazy to run to the store to buy bias tape that matches my project.
Now we need to make the loops to hold the towel rod. Take the 2.5″ x 10″ strip and fold it in half and iron.
Open the piece up and take each side and fold it to middle and iron.
Fold the entire piece back up along the center fold and iron one last time.
Stitch down both sides of the strip close to the edge.
Cut two 4″ pieces from the long strip you just created.
Sew the ends together to make a loop using a 1/4″ seam.
Flip loop inside out.
Stitch again with a 1/4″ seam allowance, going over the seam you just stitched. This traps the raw edges inside so they don’t fray.
Flip the towel holder over and on the side opposite of where the cat applique is, mark 2″ from the bottom edge.
Pin the loops at the mark and stitch them down.
Hotglue the rod to the loops.
You’re almost done! The last step is to sew on snaps. One side of the snaps should go above the towel rod loops, and the other side should be mirrored on the other side of the towel holder when you fold it in half.
Please ignore my mis-matching snaps. I was down to my last two and again with the “too lazy to go to the store”. I figured no one would see them anyways… well, no one except for anyone reading this tutorial…
And you’re done! You just need to put a towel on the rod…
And wrap towel holder around the oven handle and snap it in place.
You can use this technique to create towel holders from any fabric you have laying around. I also made a mouse one because my husband likes mice. (Oh the irony…)
And now you have cute towel holders for your kitchen!
