An Unexpected Finish - and a really dodgy tutorial

Didn't think that I would have any finishes before I left for our camping holiday in 11 days but I surprised myself. Its not much but it was a finish. It was a start and a finish all in one day!

 I love my steam mop but the cloth mop heads were falling apart. Not sure if I can buy more of them or not.

My steam mop isn't a big name brand and its just as likely that the shop where I bought it won't carry the consumables that go with it. So I made myself two new ones this morning. I cut up an old towel that has a lot of history. My husband owned it when I first met him. Not sure how long he'd had it but it was the only towel he owned when he moved into the flat that became our first home. I had a small pile that I was able to add to his meagre linen store and our wedding a month or two later further augmented it.

His towel as I recall was pretty thin then and very small for a bath towel. When we got a dog a year or so later it quickly became the dog towel. But 30 plus years later we STILL had it Cutting it up for a mop head was a good use for it. Well I thought so anyway. He looked a little pained when I showed him the remnants. I offered them to him to make something of and he thought they would do well as rags. I agreed. All I did to make the replacement was to trace around the shape of the current one onto the doubled over towelling. When I cut it out I added half an inch for seam allowance. To make the side piece I measured the width and length of my existing on. I added half an inch each end for a turn over and half an inch to the width and then doubled it. I zig zagged the two base pieces together (I did it double because the towel was pretty thin. If I'd used a thicker towel I'd have done it one thickness) Then I folded over both ends of the side piece and stitched them down half an inch each. I folded the side piece length wise and then pinned it around the base piece, starting mid back and ending up back there too, butting the two ends up against each other I stitched it down using an wide seam. Then I threaded elastic through the side piece. I put the mop head onto the steam mop and pulled the elastic tight enough that it held on firmly but so as I could still get it on and off.

I made two mop heads. The second one was made from some towelling I inherited from my Aunty. It was just a strip of towelling. I had contemplated making some hand towels out of it but really... it was pretty ugly fabric and makes a better mop head.