Recycled Beach Towel Baby Bib

In case you missed my guest post for Lil Luna's Baby Daze...

I'm kind of a simple girl, and I tend to avoid clutter.  Although necessary, the endless piles of baby bibs make me crazy!  Besides that, bibs never seem to last in our house.  They are constantly getting stained, stretched, or out grown.  I finally have a practical solution:

When I married my husband, I also married his JUNK.  In the past, I threatened to throw away his 47 beach towels. (Okay, maybe there's not 47, but we definitely have a surplus of beach towels!)  Now I think I will be hanging on to all of those towels because they make the perfect bibs!

Besides catching food and saving clothes, these bibs can also be used for cleanup!  I use these like a washcloth to wipe off Little Man's face at the end of a meal.  It's easy to slip on and off.  And it can handle a lot of wear and tear.  (Perfect for my toddler!)

Are you ready to make your own?

 Besides gathering your usual sewing supplies, you will also need one beach towel and a very small about of ribbing in a coordinating color.  I love when I can create something with what I already have at home!

 

Next, I used a bib I already owned, and lined it up with the bottom corner of my beach towel.  This way, my bib would already have 2 finished edges!  I cut an extra inch around the unfinished edges so I could hem them.

 Now I folded the unfinished edges under, pressed them, and hemmed them.  Easy enough.

 To create a hole so I could slip the bib over his head, I folded the bib in half and cut a hole from the center.

 

I decided to line that hole with ribbing. I carefully measured the circumference of the hole, and cut a strip of ribbing that was about 2 inches longer than the circumference (for overlapping) and about 2 inches wide.

Now, I pressed the strip in half lengthwise, and sewed along the entire length  Using a pencil, I carefully turned the long tube inside out.

I did some careful measuring to determine where to overlap the ends of the tube and sew them together, creating a circle.  Then I pinned the ribbing to the bib, right sides together.  I simply sewed them together, carefully stretching the ribbing as I went along.

In under an hour, I had created a new bib for this little sweetheart...

  He could have a career as a professional bib model! 

 See that applesauce on his chin?  Easily wiped off with the towel bib!

Enjoy your week, my friends!