The hand towel project from hell

Fresh off the success of our successful garage sale, where we averaged about $2 an hour for the weekend, I decided to throw myself into yet another project: hand towels made from old towels for my daughter’s daycare for the kids to use instead of paper towels.

There is a whiteboard outside of my daughter’s daycare that informs parents and grandparents about various volunteering tasks or supplies that the daycare needs. Most of the time, I look at these cheery messages and I feel instantly guilty that I do not volunteer more often.

Usually, I can suppress the guilty-feeling and carry on not volunteering for a simple job that quickly turns into a nightmare that sucks the joy out of your soul until there is nothing left but a dried out husk of a grumpy mother.

The hand towel project did not go well.

First, I cut the towels into (mostly) squares and the little terry cloth fibres attached themselves to everything that I was wearing.

Then, I attempted to use my regular sewing machine to zigzag stitch around the edges so it didn’t fray. My regular machine is not super fancy and I don’t have a satin stitch on it so zigzag was the best that I could do.

Later, by a perfect coincidence, I ended up inheriting my grandmother’s serger that would work for this project – I thought, naively.

For those unfamiliar with sewing machines (and whose eyes are glossing over with boredom), there are two types of sewing machines that most people use: a regular sewing machine that has two threads and one needle and a serger that was forged in the fiery depths of hell sporting four threads and two needles.

As you may imagine, a serger has a fairly steep learning curve.

For me, it was more of a mountainous climb. As my newto-me serger had been out of commission for a while, I took it to be serviced and cleaned.

The gentleman who fixed everything for me told me, “the tension is fine. Don’t touch any of the knobs.” So I went home and promptly touched the knobs and nothing I tried to sew worked for three weeks.

Since then, I have spent a lot of time on internet crafty sites in the vain hope that someone else was struggling and I think that I have successfully exorcized the demon living in the machine.

I have finished the project and have delivered hand towels to the daycare. I am supportive of the need for non-paper hand dryers for toddlers to minimize paper waste and I am happy to have contributed to this green initiative.

If only we could find a way to harness the energy of cursing and tears. I could have powered a small village.