How To Fold a Towel Person
I hadn’t really thought about making a towel person until V of Lame Adventures mentioned in a comment that she thought I could make her in a towel. Of course trying to make a towel sculpture of a specific person is harder than just making a random towel person. For a specific person you need to find some characteristics of that person you can imitate in a towel. Start with a towel in the closest shade you can find to the person’s skin color. Which is not easy as towels don’t tend to come in colors that resemble anything near human skin tones. I do have one hand towel I found in a thrift shop that works pretty well for caucasian skin. Luckily only the head towel color matters. Any color works for the body towel since people wear clothes.
Since I am making this towel person to resemble an actual person it would be nice for anyone reading this to know what she looks like. So I jacked her photo from the banner on her blog.
Curling ribbon or yarn would make great hair for towel people. Curling ribbon for curly hair, which works fine if you want yellow, red, or white hair since curling ribbon is easy to find in those colors. I could not find any in brown or black. Yarn comes in all sorts of colors and makes great straight hair. Of course V has to be difficult and have curly brown hair. Sigh. Pipe cleaners is all I could find to make dark curly hair. These were actually called fuzzy craft sticks, but same thing.
The other distinguishing feature she has is glasses, and luckily I have some of those. Cheap baby clothes are plentiful at thrift stores and sized about right for towel people. I couldn’t find tiny gloves for the hands in the middle of the summer and was too cheap to buy tiny socks for the feet, which would be the obvious things to use.
Supplies Needed to Make a Towel Person
hand towel in skin tone
bath towel any color
baby clothes if desired
decorations – this is what brings the towel person to life, whatever you use for eyes, hair, hands and feet, mouth, and any other embellishments like glasses or a purse or shoes
How to Fold a Towel Person Head

Make sure the ends are exactly even. This towel needs the ends adjusted before rolling because one side hangs a bit lower than the other.
Hang the hand towel from a wall hook or tuck it under your chin. Roll both sides as tightly as you can. Mine tend to come out a bit lopsided now. As anyone who reads this blog regularly knows, I broke my left elbow inside the joint last spring. Both the doctor and therapist had very low expectations for me, but it did heal better than either of them expected. It will never be 100% though and there are some positions that arm can’t achieve. It also lacks in strength and dexterity, with two of the fingers trying to function as a single unit. So I can’t ever roll both sides evenly any more.

Roll towel from the top so the end gets very tight while making the entire pair of rolls as tight as possible.
With the rolls to the outside, roll from the wide end to the point. Leave just enough towel for ears hanging out at the end and tuck the point end in between the rolls with a bit sticking out for the nose. For more photos on the various stages of folding a towel head, see the leprechaun towel folding blog.
Pointy ears work fine for things like cats, elves, or Vulcans, but since this is a human, shape the ears rounder by tucking ends in as needed. Tuck in more on one side than the other if necessary to even the ears out as I had to on this one.
I have little blue jeans and a tiny sweatshirt to dress my towel human, mainly because that is what the thrift store had that did not look completely babyish. So I’m using a light blue towel for the body. It can be the shirt and will go with the rest of the outfit.
How to Fold a Towel Human Body
The towel person uses the standard towel animal body used in the majority of towel animals. Lay the bath towel out flat. From the short side roll each end to the center.
Fold rolled towel in half, rolls to the outside. Pull the tips out of the center of each roll.
Taking the two halves of one roll in one hand and the two halves of the other roll in the other hand, pull all four until the rolls pull out into legs (or in this case arms and legs) and the towel resembles a body.

If you don’t have the hand or arm strength to pull all four rolls at once, let one side go and use both hands to pull just one side of the body at a time
If you lack the hand strength to pull them all at once, just get it started a bit and then pull each side separately. I have to do it that way now since I can’t pull it all at once.
When the towel body is done it is time to dress it and add the head.
Finishing the Towel Person
Dress the towel person body as desired (which could be as simple as putting it in a sitting position and draping another towel around it like a robe or using the body towel as clothing.)
Position the body as desired and add decorations – eyes, hair, etc.

Finishing touches on the lame adventures towel person included eyes, glasses, gloves, socks, and hair as well as the little jeans and sweatshirt. She was positioned to imitate the picture. She kind of reminds me of the old original cabbage patch dolls back when they had yarn hair.
For other towel creations please visit My Cruise Stories Towel Animal Page.
What an honor to be transformed into a towel sculpture — complete with glasses, Lois! If only my complexion was as smooth and even as the nap in terrycloth! Thanks, pal!
I’m glad you liked it.
That a ringer for Lame! Well done!!!
Thanks, it’s nice to know that other people see the resemblance.
You definitely captured the essence of V. I especially like the streaming curls, the outstretched arms and the excited (and slightly terrified) look in her eyes. Great job!!!
thanks
Love it! I’m a follower of L.A. — the towel person suits V. to a … well, tea. What a great compliment.
Thanks. It was fun to make her, other than difficulty in finding suitable hair.
It is my humble opinion that V is destined to be immortalized in many ways ~ however a towel person was not one I had envisioned. But then again … why not? Has MOMA been made aware of this?
It was actually V’s idea, though she was probably kidding at the time.
Amazing! You are really good. Who knew there was a specialization like this. The world is an wonderful and interesting place.
I had a thought. Is there a sci-fi horror movie on ‘The Towel People’? It could be a big hit.
Towel animals are common on some cruise ships, but I haven’t seen or heard of a towel person anywhere else so the odds of a movie about them are quite slim. Horror in towels, that’s a new one. What would they do – dry up an entire town and leave everyone to die of thirst?
South Park has a character named towelie. It was developed by the military and could keep drying you past the point where you were already dry leaving you with really dry skin. Towelie mostly just gets high and wanders off though.
I bounced over from V’s site! I love this. You are so creative. I’d like to attempt this, but I bet it’s harder than it looks. Great job on making V a towel person. She’s very cute. 🙂
The good thing about learning to make towel animals is that if it doesn’t work out the first time you can just unfold the towel and do it again.
True! Thanks for the lesson.
You’re welcome.
An uncanny resemblance and even ready to fly. Well done LB ❤
Thanks 🙂
Lois, that is one of your best, most creative towel sculptures yet. The resemblance can’t be missed, it is a dead ringer for V. Nicely done!
Very interesting! Thank you for sharing this with us!
Cheers!! 😀