Sew Reusable Handkerchiefs – Easy Fabric Stash Busting
Need a way to get through your fabric stash and give you some help this flu and cold season? Then follow this easy tutorial to make your own reusable handkerchiefs!
If you’ve been around The Cozy Cuttlefish for a while, you might have noticed that things have been a bit quiet around here lately. Part of this brief hiatus was due to how busy the end of the year can get with holidays, family gatherings, and other events.
The other reason I haven’t been posting much is that I have been sick. Nothing serious, just a cold, and then another cold, and then another cold. Even right now, as I am writing this, I have to stop and blow my nose every few sentences.
Because my family and I seem to be perpetually sick this winter, by the third round of colds, we completely ran out of tissues. While toilet paper can do in a pinch, it can fall apart in your hands, and it always leaves my nose feeling raw.
The last thing I wanted to do was leave the house, so instead of going to the store, I pulled out some fabric scraps and sewed some emergency reusable handkerchiefs.
Not only do these feel better than a lot of tissues or toilet paper, they are economically and ecologically friendly. Any excuse to use some fabric scraps is a good one!
What You’ll Need to Sew Your Own Reusable Handkerchiefs
Fabric Scraps
You don’t need very big scraps to make a hankie, just big enough to blow your nose or wipe your face. Make sure you use something that feels nice in your hand, since your nose is even more sensitive. I recommend using natural fibers like cotton or linen if you have it. All of my handkerchiefs were made with woven fabrics, but you could use knits as well.
Something to Measure With
If you want your hankies to be the same size, or make sure they are perfectly square, a measuring tool is useful. This can be a ruler, a yard stick, a tape measure, or anything else you have on hand! If you don’t care what size your reusable handkerchiefs are, you can skip this and just eyeball it!
Something to Cut With
You’ll want a sharp pair of scissors to cut out your fabric. A pair of designated fabric scissors is an essential item for any sewist.
Something to Iron With
If you didn’t already know, a huge part of sewing is ironing. It’s how you get your fabric to lay flat or fold exactly how you want it. Even with a sewing project as simple as this one, an iron is an essential sewing tool.
Something to Secure Your Fabric With
For most sewing projects, you need something to hold your fabric pieces together before you get them sewn. The most common way to do this is to use straight pins. There are also fabric clips that can work as well. Just use whatever you have on hand or can get easily. These hankies don’t require much to hold them.
Something to Sew With
These handkerchiefs are so easy to sew, you can use a simple needle and thread, or run them through a sewing machine or serger. Use whatever you have access to!
How to Sew Reusable Handkerchiefs
Getting the Fabric Ready
Washing and Ironing
If you are working with new fabric, or it’s been in your stash for a while, it’s always a good idea to give it a wash before you start sewing.
Once you have some clean fabric, iron it out flat so you have an even surface to work with. This will make cutting out your fabric so much easier!
Cutting Out Fabric
To start with, you’ll need to cut out your fabric. A traditional hankie is usually square, and somewhere around 12 inches on each side. But there is no reason you have to follow this!
Squares and rectangles will be easier to hem, but work with what size fabric you have. I made a variety of handkerchief sizes, and some were square and some were rectangle.
These hankies are for practicality, not for aesthetics. If your piece of fabric can wipe your face and blow your nose, it’s perfect!
Tip: If you want to quickly measure a square of fabric, fold a right corner over and cut out the resulting triangle. When you open it up, you’ll have a square of fabric.
Preparing the Raw Edges
You might be looking at your stack of fabric squares and think, “I can blow my nose with this, why do I need to sew them?”
You’re not wrong, you could use plain pieces of fabric to blow your nose, but as soon as you throw your hankies in the laundry, they are going to unravel at the raw edges, so it’s best to take care of those first.
Wherever your fabric has been cut will have raw edges. That means places where the woven threads of the fabric are not secure and will eventually come apart.
There are many different ways to secure your raw edges, but today we will keep things simple.
Fold each edge of your hankies over twice and iron them down. You want to fold up about half an inch worth of fabric, but for this purpose it doesn’t have to be precise. Now your raw edges should be tucked under.
As you are folding and ironing, you can add a few pins to hold everything in place.
Sewing Your Reusable Handkerchiefs
At this point, you’ve actually done most of the work. The sewing is the easy (and fun) part. You just need to sew down the raw edges you’ve folded over.
The fastest way to do this, and the method that I used, was to simply sew around the edge of each hankie with a straight stitch on a sewing machine. I had a large stack of hankies to get through and a nose that wouldn’t stop running, so time was important. I didn’t even worry about what color thread I was using!
If you don’t have a sewing machine (or have one and have no idea how to use it yet), don’t worry! These make an easy hand sewing project! There are a few different stitches you can use.
A running stitch is the fastest, easiest hand sewing stitch to use.
Using a whip stitch to secure the edges gives a clean finish.
Or you can use a back stitch for an extra secure hold.
And really, that’s all there is to it! I’ve had fun comparing different fabrics and seeing what I like best. So far, linen is my favorite. It’s soft and absorbent!
