Beach Towel Dresses: A Tutorial-ish

So, I had this idea to make a bathing suit cover up out of a towel.  I even had my mom bring me some cute towels from Target when she visited from America.  I was so excited.  Then I saw this.  A swimsuit cover up, made with my exact same towel!  From DANA!

Yes, I did have about 1.4 seconds of dismay, but it was immediately followed by the realization that I was going to do something that DANA thought of too!  To me, that = awesome.  You can probably tell how I feel about DANA by the way I keep writing her name in all caps.  She pretty much rocks my crafty world.

So, I told DANA about this funny little story and she was so nice to write an email back about how that has happened to her in the past as well and she encouraged me to make my idea anyway and even went as far as to say that the crafty blog reading world is large and we don't all have the same readers anyway (which is definitely not true, but incredibly sweet of her to say.  I mean, I KNOW you guys all read DANA's blog, right?)

But, to be fair, and slightly less copy-catty, I did shift my idea a bit, and came up with these:

And I gotta say, I am in love with them.  I heart them big time.  And I have DANA to thank for it.  (Thanks DANA!)

No real tutorial for these, as they were stunningly easy to make, but here is a run down to show you what I did.

These are the pieces you'll need.  The red lines that I drew indicate where you want to use the finished edges of the towel to save yourself some work.

First, ruffle the trim and sew it to the bottom of the dress pieces.  Sew the two hood pieces together.

Then sew the dress together on the side seams and shoulder seams.  Sew the hood to the neckline.  Finish the arm holes and neckline with bias binding.  When you sew the bias binding around the neck, make sure you catch the hood's seam allowances also.

That's it!

My favorite part about these?  No Dora in sight.  What is up with swimsuit covers and licensed characters?  Seriously!

ps: if you make these, have your vacuum handy.  You'll see why.