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Make Your Own Personalised Swimming Towel!

Make your own personalised swimming towel with a Cricut Explore Air and any fabric you want. Perfect summer gift for anyone!

Hi Friends!  Are you ready for summer??  It’s coming fast!  Here in Northern California it’s been pretty warm already. 

My kiddos have already been in the pool since mid April!  I decided we needed some new towels this year and of course I wanted a personalised swimming towel, so I thought I’d show you how easy they are to make!personalised pool towel diy pin

 

Materials Needed for Personalised Swimming Towel

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personalized swimming towel

Applying Heat Bond to Fabric

Make sure to prewash all of your fabric and your towels!

Measure your towels and decide how big you want the name to be.  Cut a piece of fabric (bigger than you want the name) and Heat n Bond a little bit smaller and iron them together. 

Make sure to read the directions on the back of the Heat n Bond bag.  I set my iron to medium high heat.  Place the liner side up and iron the adhesive side to the back side of your fabric.

Hold the iron in place for about 2 seconds and then move onto the next section. Be careful not to iron the heat n bond to your ironing board!  I did and it is not easy to get off! 

I had a bit hanging off on some of the sides and it adhered very nicely to my fabric ironing board….personalized swimming towel

personalised swimming towel

Cutting Fabric with Cricut Explore

Since I have a Cricut Explore (which I LOVE and always recommend!), I cut the fabric out with it.  But if you don’t have one, no worries, you can cut paper out to be your pattern! 

You can design your name in Word or Google Docs, enlarge it to your size, print it out, cut out the letters, pin them to your fabric and cut.  The big block size letter would be super easy to cut out with scissors. 

Or you can freehand the letters on paper, cut them out, again pin them to your fabric and cut out using the paper as your pattern.

If you a have a Cricut, simply put the bonded material on a sticky mat with the liner side down.  Set the setting to Fabric (I used polyester setting).  I inserted a deep point blade and then cut! 

I tested a small bonded piece of fabric with a circle to make sure the settings and blade worked.  Don’t waste a big piece of fabric and bond before you test it out! 

Also, if your fabric has a right side up make sure you place it the right way on your mat by looking how it’s laid out in CDS and on the cut screen.

personalized swimming towel

For the flamingo towel, I wanted the letters to pop so I made a shadow layer.  If you’d like to learn how I make the shadow layers in Cricut Design Space, check out my video tutorial here!  For the other towel, I just cut one layer.

After it cuts, take off the letters.  Most of mine pulled up without the backing which was perfect.  If it doesn’t, just peel off the back liner.

personalised swimming towel

personalised swimming towel

Applying Names to Towels

Align them on your towel.  I put a meter stick and lined it up with one side so I knew they were straight.personalised swimming towel

You can iron on the two layers separate if you want.  My bottom layer was a really thin layer so I just did them both at the same time. 

Carefully press the iron down and hold in place for about 8 seconds per section.  Don’t move it quickly or the letters might move.  Make sure to press down the corners really well.personalised swimming towel

personalised swimming towel

I wanted to make sure the lettering would stay on through a lot of years so I added a zig zag stitch around the letters.  This is a very basic sewing project. 

You don’t even have to zig zag, you could just go through close to the edge with a straight stitch.  The big block letters are really easy to sew around.

 Mine are not even close to being perfectly sewn, but I know they are on there for good!  Make sure your towels are cool, before you stitch them!

personalised swimming towel

personalised swimming towel

That’s it!  Pretty easy and much cheaper than buying a personalised pool towel!

personalized swimming towel

personalized swimming towel

If you’d like to check out a whole bunch of projects you can make with a Cricut, click here!

Now, I have to get working on my boys’ towels!  These would also be awesome gifts for kids!!

personalized swimming towel

 

personalized swimming towel

 

personalized swimming towel

 

personalized swimming towel

I also just made this cute DIY pool towel rack!  Click here to check out the towel rack tutorial!

personalized swimming towel

personalized swimming towel

Thanks so much for stopping by!  Have a creative day!

leap of faith crafting

 

If you’d like to save this idea for later, you can PIN it now, if you’d like!

diy pool towels pin

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