Spa Scrubbie Set

http://www.flamingotoes.com/2011/01/spa-scrubbie-and-bath-tea-soak/
Spa Scrubbie and Tropical Bath Tea Soak!

Jan 2011 Beverly

If you’re just arriving at our Blog Spa, make sure you check out:
My tutorial for a Spa Headband and an Oatmeal Facial
Fantastic Tutorial and Tips at Twelve Crafts for a soothing Hot/Cold Eye Mask

Does it feel like you don’t ever have any “Me” time?

Sometimes it can get a bit crazy feeling like I’m going in a million different directions – and even when I’m alone I feel like there is so much to get done.
One of my favorite ways to relax is with a nice, long, super hot bath.
There’s nothing quite as relaxing as filling a bath with something yummy smelling, grabbing a book, and having some time to just . . . . rest.
(Apparently I also have a number of books that like to take baths also, because they seem to just jump right in the water. I have a whole wrinkly-dropped-in-the-bath-then-dried-out section on my bookshelf. )

Let’s start with the bath scrubbie! You’ll need:

Small piece of Cotton (enough for back of scrubbie and two pieces for strap)
Click here for the PDF Pattern
Piece of towel – cut out 1 piece double the width of the scrubbie back piece
Piece of lace – cut length of strap.

Start with the strap. Sew the piece of lace to one piece of the strap, down the center.

Place the two strap pieces, right sides together, and sew the long top and bottom sides. Leave the two short sides open.
Turn right side out and press.

Pin the strap to the right side of the oval cotton piece, in the center. Sew the two short sides to the oval piece with a small 1/8 seam allowance.

Now we’re going to work on ruffling our towel. This can be a little tiny bit tricky.
Normally to gather material, you set your sewing machine to the longest stitch length and sew a line of stitching. You can either hold the thread spool as you go and it will ruffle itself, or you can gather it by pulling lightly on one end of the thread.
Neither of these methods worked with the towel. It was too thick.
So I ended up bunching up the towel as I sewed, kind of forcing a gather, and that seemed to work best. I just pushed the fabric up into a gather and sewed a regular sized stitch over it. Not very technical or fancy but it worked.

I ended up sewing rows of gathering about 3/4″ apart, all down the length of the towel piece.

Pin the right side of your cotton piece to the right side of the ruffles. Don’t worry about the corners, we’ll trim those off soon.

Sew around your oval with a 1/2″ seam allowance, leave a space open at the bottom to turn it right side out.

Trim all the excess towel off.

Turn your scrubbie right side out. I did a small stitch around the edge (but not over the strap) to help hold it together and to sew the opening closed.
This got a little thick for my machine in places. If you want to skip this step, you can just sew the opening closed by hand.

Cute huh? Your hand just slides right in!

Now let’s make the Tropical Bath Tea Soak - so we have something yummy smelling and soothing for the water.
I originally found this recipe here, and just tweaked it a bit for the scent I like.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup cornstarch
1 cup dry milk
1/2 cup oatmeal
2 teaspoons green tea with mango leaves
2 teaspoons peach tea leaves
(If you don’t have loose tea, I found 3 tea bags is about 2 teaspoons. Or close enough anyway.

Directions:
Begin by grinding up your oatmeal. A coffee grinder works great for this.

Add your oatmeal and other ingredients to a food processor and whiz them up all together.

Add 2 Tablespoons to warm bath water!

That’s it! So easy.

If you tea leaves are big and flaky, your can grind them up in your coffee grinder too, or when you take a bath you can add the 2 Tablespoons to an Organza Drawstring Bag, like this one:

and add the bag to your bathwater. They sell those at craft stores – usually near the wedding supplies. You could reuse it too – just rinse the tea out after each bath.

I poured the Bath Tea into a bottle I had, and of course dressed it up to match our set.
I glued a strip of the cotton around the jar, then glued a strip of lace over that.
I tied a jute string around the neck to hold a tablespoon too.

I think it makes a fun little set!

These would make great gifts too! These would be perfect as shower or birthday gifts!
Keep in mind all your Moms too – it’s never too early to start crafting for Mother’s Day!

You would need to make yourself a set first though – just to try everything out. It’s the polite thing to do.