Dish towels upcycled from bath towels

Posted by: Paulette
After painting my kitchen cabinets, I wanted some new, dish towels and washcloths. But, I didn't want to spend the kind of money that I knew would be required to get some new ones. And I didn't even know if they had the colors I wanted. My old ones were rags, and the ones that were in good shape were the kind that had cutsie fruit prints on them. I wanted aqua and turquoise.
So, being the thrift store addict that I am, I picked up some bath towels in the colrs that I wanted for about $1.50 each. For the dish towels, I folded the bath towel lengthwise into thirds and then cut along the folds. Then I folded it into thirds ( or half if the towel was a smaller one) again, and cut again. By doing this I got 6- 9 kitchen towels from each bath towel. I also bought a shower curtain that was in all of the colors I wanted. I think it was $5. I also cut that apart for some bar cloths. Wash cloths wre made in a sililar way, just smaller.
For the bar cloths, I hemmed all of the edges, but for the wash cloths and towels, I just used a matching thread and a zig zag stitch on my machine to bind the edges so that they don't fray in the wash.

the other upside of all of this is that the terry cloth used for bath towels is thicker than the stuff used for kitchen towels, so they are more absorbent.
This is just a few of them, I made a ton!
I also used the old dish cloths and some of the shower curtain material to make new hot pads. I love how everything matches now!