Dish Towel Cake Tutorial

I'm going to a bridal shower this weekend, and I decided to make a dishtowel cake as my gift. I've made these a few times before; they are so much fun and very easy to make. It's also a much more fun way to give items like place mats, dish towels, and cloth napkins as gifts. You can decorate them in any theme....the bride's wedding colors, colors fitting the shower theme, colors matching items on the registry. For this one, I went with colors that match their registry theme. You will need four place mats, a table runner, a pack of six cloth napkins, and three flour sack towels for the layers, and silk flowers, ribbon, and whatever you want to put on the top of the cake (I have a letter for the top for the bride's soon to be new name). You will want wire cutters, scissors, and maybe some floral wire or tape (I don't always use it, but it was helpful for this one because I used longer stems). I started out with this:

And ended up with this:

Here's how:

It takes quite a few dish towels to make something like this, so I usually use a set of four place mats, a table runner, and a 6-pack of cloth napkins, along with a 3-pack of flour sack towels. I just found that to be a bit more cost-effective.

I got both the napkins and the flour sack towels at Cost Plus World Market. The awesome thing about the flour sack towels is that they come in packs of three shades of the same color, so it gives an ombre effect to the cake.

For the cake base, you will want a dinner plate (I usually get a plain white one at the Dollar Store) or charger and a bottle of something....I usually use a nice bottle of wine, but the couple I made this one for aren't wine fans so I got a nice bottle of sparkling cider from Cost Plus. Just a tip....white wines tend to make the best centers for the cake because they are fatter bottles. Any bottle will work though. Anyways, center the bottle on the plate or charger like this:

I don't usually anchor the bottle to the plate, but you could do that with some glue dots if you wanted to. Anyways, you will also want a pack of colored paper clips, a bag of mixed size rubber bands, and safety pins or straight pins (I usually use straight pins, as they are more discreet, but I'm out of those so I used safety pins). You can pick up all of those items at the Dollar Store.

Next, take your place mats and table runner (or towels or napkins) and fold them so they cover about 1/3 of the bottle height (the bottom layer will probably be a bit bigger than 1/3 of the bottle...that's totally ok). If you need to safety pin them so they stay folded better, go for it.

Wrap it around the bottle as tightly as possible, and then rubber band it in place.

You will need progressively larger rubber bands, which is why the mixed bag is perfect (smaller ones are great for diaper cakes....which I will post about in the future!). Anyways, wrap all of the place mats/table runner/whatever else you are using around the bottle until it is the width you want for the bottom layer (I usually fill the diameter of the plate or the center of the charger). By the way, you will want to stagger the "seams" so that you don't end up with a giant bulge on one side of the layer (see picture). Once you are done with wrapping the first layer, double rubber band around it to keep it secure.

It's ok if it's not perfectly round; for one thing, I've never been able to get it to be perfectly round, and for another in the end it kind of evens out....you'll see.

Next you take a flour sack towel and fold it to match the height of the layer.I usually put the darkest color towel on the bottom, with the lightest on top....this gives it the ombre effect. Anyways, after you fold it, wrap it around the layer as tightly as you can.

Paper clip it in the back (which will be wherever the seam ends up being) and then smooth out any wrinkles. If there is excess on the bottom, tuck it under the layer (you'll notice that the layers rotate around the bottle and can lift up, which is helpful for making it look polished).

 Start adding your next layer (I used the cloth napkins for this one). The bottle I used narrowed significantly and wasn't as tall as most wine bottles, so I folded one around the narrow neck first and then wrapped the rest of them around it. Also, I found it helpful to paper clip the seams of the napkins as well as rubber banding it.

For the top layer, I did not have much bottle left to work with, so I found it easiest to just roll up the last flour sack towel and stick it on there.

At this point, I rotated the layers so that the seams were all in the back. I did have to safety pin them, but I usually recommend straight pins. However, this will probably just sit on the back corner of a table, so I don't really care about the safety pins.

Now it's time to "frost" the cake!

Take your ribbon and cut it to fit your layer. You can put it anywhere on it you like....for this one I put the ribbon on the center of each layer. I safety pinned it in the back (to the flour sack towel) so it held in place.

I also added a bit of blue twine over the ribbon to tie into the bride's wedding colors:

You'll notice each layer isn't totally smooth and wrinkle-free; it's ok to have wrinkles. It's a cake made of towels after all! :)

This is the best part now....time to add flowers! I always just buy silk flowers from the Dollar Tree. They usually have a decent selection of colors and flowers and you can't beat the price! I usually have lots leftover too that I end up using for other projects (the flowers in my spring apothecary jars were leftover from a towel cake!). Anyways, I was going for a sort of country-foresty feel, so this is what I picked up:

This is the part where I just experiment with the flowers until I'm happy with it. I used the wire cutters to trim the stems, and the floral tape to hold a few of the bunches together. Once you have your flowers cut, just stick them between the towels and tweak until you're happy with them.

Remember, odd numbers are ascetically more pleasing to look at, so that's a good rule to keep in mind (and I just realized I need to add one more to the bottom bunch to fit the rule!).

Finally, time for your cake topper. I found a camo-covered "S" for the top, which fits perfectly with the couple :). I taped a large popsicle stick to it to make it stand up, and then tucked it into the top towel layer. I then arranged a few more floral pieces around it until I was happy with it.

Here's the finished product:

I always make a mess when I make these! :) Also, here's what the back of it looks like, so you can see all the pins and such:

Here's a few other towel cakes I've made. The pink one was the first one I ever attempted; I didn't use towels for the outside, but cut fabric to cover the outside. I think the flour sack towels are easier.  The first one is also comprised of mostly dish towels, which was just crazy to put together. The second one I actually cut the "S" on top out with my Cricut and covered it in glitter; that's another way to make this a less expensive project.

So that's it. Pretty easy...really it's just about tweaking until you're happy with it. I'd love to see pictures if you make one yourself....so please share! :)

Sola Deo Gloria!