Over the past few years, I've made simple towelling cover-ups for my grand-daughters - just something they can wear over a wet swimming costume to play around the pool. If that's what you want, you might like to check out these other posts for how to make really simple and quick cover-ups.
However, you'll note those are all 'summer' cover-ups. When I started this post, two of my grand-daughters had restarted their swimming after lockdown, in an open air pool. But by this time it was winter, down to about 11 degrees centigrade, and with the changing rooms not open, the only choice was to change or wrap up on the pool side in a biting wind.
Something urgently was needed, and I threw together these two new hooded towelling wraps to cover them up, with the idea being that they could get changed underneath them. Here's one cheeky monkey in her towelling robe. It does button up at the neck, but she wanted to play rather than model.
Because time was of the essence, I bought a pair of not too expensive towels off the internet. They were the largest I could find at a reasonable price. These were Catherine Lansfield Rainbow Pair Beach Towels from Amazon. 150cm x 75cm. I chose the red and green pair at £11 for the pair, but they were several other colour pairs, some the same price, some slightly more expensive. (Towelling by the metre is pretty expensive so I thought these a good deal.)
This is the Amazon picture.
Having received them, I regretted not buying more. I realised I wasn't going to have quite enough in these two towels to do what I'd wanted, but I'd been reluctant to splash out without seeing the quality. They were better quality than I expected, and I have since bought another pair. But at the time, I only had enough to make the basic wraps, and not enough for the hoods. If you were making a smaller size, you could get the hoods out of any excess, or out of a smaller matching towel.
As you can see, the basic idea was to fold them in half, cut a hole and a front slit, and add a hood to the hole. For the green one, I had a hand towel in a similar shade of green (though not identical), which I used to cut the smaller hood.
There are numerous free hood patterns available, though most are add-ons to a particular pattern. I had a few patterns, but most had an overlap hood and I wanted an edge-to-edge hood. This one worked perfectly for me, it is from Stitch Upon a Time's Riding Hood Poncho, and comes in sizes 6 month to 8 years. I used the size 4, and cut in between the 6 and 8 pattern lines for a size 7.
I cut two pieces from my hand towel, using the towel's finished edging for the front edge. Then clipped them together and sewed the seam.
But here's the fancy bit. I sewed the seam on the outside, not the inside, and then added some wide satin bias binding to cover the seam on the outside. You can see that the green towelling has stripes in a lighter and darker jade green, and in yellow and orange. I thought that by using the darker jade as a decoration on the hood, it would tie it more closely into the body.
A lot of people might use a serger to finish the seams, but that wasn't for me. Towelling is such a fraying fabric that I preferred to completely cover all the cut edges (hence my 'inside out' hood method). The already finished side edges of the towel formed the edges of the robe and the bottom edges of the 'sleeves', but the neckline and front slit were raw edges, which I covered with a lighter colour of bias tape (which also matched one of the stripes in the towel).
I finished the robe off by adding a button and a loop at the neck to keep the slit closed (in the end neither girls seems bothered about using it) ad several Kam snaps down the sides to form sleeves and hold the sides partly together. You can see here below on the red one that I used different colours of snaps to match the stripes in the towel - yellow, dark orange, jade, and light orange. I did the same on the green one.
I had to take a slightly different approach with the hood on the red one. I had no spare towelling that would match either the red or the colours of the stripes. But I did have some stretchy red fabric and a small piece of white towelling. So for this one I made a two layer hood (thus enclosing all the raw edges). Again, I decided to try and tie it in more with the body of the robe by putting stripes of bias binding near the edge that corresponded to some of the stripes in the towel. I was worried that the two layers would make the hood rather heavy and that it would unbalance the robe, but in fact Jane loves the hood - more about that shortly.
You've seen the finished picture of Ada's size 4 robe - here it is again. It's just about ankle length. (She is 3.)
I knew Jane's would be shorter, probably about knee length, but I hoped I'd get away with it. And I might have done so, had she not been jealous of her younger sister's reaching her ankles. What to do? I didn't have any other red towelling. I did have some more of the light green from which I'd made Ada's hood, though it was slightly narrower. So I added some of this spare towelling to the bottom. I didn't like the look of it really, but she was much happier with the ankle length wrap. With a longer towel, or by using towelling fabric, you wouldn't need the extra piece. Now that I have more of the same towels, I think I'll ask for the robes back, and I'll make matching hoods, and a matching hem border on Jane's.
(However, Jane has now told me I can change the bottom if I want to, but not to change the hood - she likes the hood as it's 'very cosy'.
It will look better with the extended hem matching though.
NOTE The red one has now been extended with a wider matching piece - don't yet have a picture.
Not long after these had been delivered (and as it started to get even colder) I saw on Facebook an idea for a much more substantial 3-layer swim robe, with a link to the pattern made by the Facebook post's author. So I decided I do one each for Christmas - and while I was at it, I would make another two for their cousins. I have now finished these, and there is another post with my experiences with the warmer and more heavy-weight robes - ideal for the British winter. You'll find the links to the Swim Robe pattern on that post.
The quick and easy robes I've described in THIS post will probably now be relegated to warmer weather use, or following bathtime, but as the girls have now received (and have used) their three layer robes, I will get the thinner ones back and alter them as I've suggested.
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