Unpaper towels!

The name of the blog 'Handavinnublogg' means something like 'crafty blog'. Handavinna is an Icelandic word which literally means 'handwork'. It is used to group together all sorts of activities you do with your hands: stitching, knitting, crocheting, lacework, etc. I chose this name because I was interested in cross stitching, knitting and crocheting so I figured 'handavinna' was kind of all encompassing.

There is one handavinna I've always wanted to do more of, but been having a hard time getting into. It's machine sewing. I did some last summer, when my daughters were in Iceland, but not much since then. I was having an issue with my machine (it kept breaking the needles). But I've resolved that now, so no excuses. One of my problems is that I don't have a good place to do it. I was totally charmed by these 'unpaper towels', i.e. paper towels (eldhúsrúlla) made out of fabric. Here is a tutorial, and if you search the web for 'unpaper towels' you can find many examples. I just had to try and finally whipped out my sewing machine again. :)

I found the tutorial above on Friday, and instead of saving the link, I sent it to my email with the title: must make this wknd. I guess it worked since on Sunday I started picking out fabric, cutting out a whole bunch of 10x10 inch squares (enough to make 10 towels) and even starting to sew them together. Then I realized we were getting late for a dinner party and had to run out of the door (forgetting bunch of stuff and looking fairly casual).

Well, I kept at it. I worked on them some more after I came back home and then Monday after work and 4H (program the kids are in) I kept going still, and finished after the kids were in bed.

I finally found a nice comfy place to sew. The coffee table! (sófaborð). I could sit comfortably on the sofa and even have the Olympics play in the background. The kids could sit next to me and even help (pushing the pedal was a favorite). My husband fusses about having to watch the olympics (he's an anti-sport kind of person), but secretly he enjoys watching it and awwws and owwws at nice performances. (p.s. we were watching the men's synchronized diving and these men have the best sport outfits ever!!!)

So I finished the 10 towels (or almost). You can put snaps (or velcro, but I´m worried that the velcro will become full of fuss in no time with these towels) so you can roll them up like a real paper towel. I was planning to do that, and earlier this evening I got the snap kit out only to discover that I had but 5 snaps (gasp!), but I need more like 20 of each kind (male/female). So for now these towels have no snaps. I was even in Joann's this Sunday looking at snap stuff, but I didn't think of buying extra snaps (I was wanting to see if they had a good tool/machine to make snaps with). Since the nearest Joann is 45 min away, I don't go there very often, but perhaps Walmart has snaps now that they have their fabric department back (yay!).

The fabric I used was a terry cloth I got when my mom was visiting about 5 years ago and the cloth is vintage fabric my friend gave me after she help clean out stuff for someone else. I picked it because it was kind of cute and whimsical and now I'm really glad I did because this fabric gives the unpaper towels a certain character, don't you think?

My kids (two girls, almost 9 (in a week) and 7) were fascinated by the sewing, much more than they are ever with my other crafts (except maybe stitching). It prompted them to want to make their own projects, but more about that later. Until then, here are couple of pictures, one of them helping me iron and the other of their 'littlest pet shop' characters, which profited from the fabric scraps.