Towel Animals delight most passengers on many of the major cruise lines. I haven’t cruised on all of them (yet) so I can’t say for sure if everyone has them, but so far all the big ships I’ve sailed on with Carnival, Holland America, and Norwegian had daily towel animals. I’ve learned a lot about folding towel animals since I first wrote this blog, and now have all sorts of other blogs about folding individual towel animals. Some even have videos.
Click photo for instructions on how to fold this easy towel penguin
For instructions on folding specific animals, go to the towel animal page where you will find photos of every towel animal on the blog. Clicking photos on the towel animal page brings you to the blog with the instructions for that specific animal. There are all sorts of different animals from ships there as well as some of my own creations and holiday towel animals. Some are very easy like the penguin and others more difficult like the fire breathing dragon.
click photo to see how to fold this fire-breathing towel dragon
Continue reading for my first-ever towel animal folding blog.
Carnival book instructions
The art of towel animal folding seems to elude most cruise ship passengers, just as it once eluded me. I’ve gone to the towel animal folding demonstrations on more than one cruise. While quite skillful towel folders, cabin stewards do not usually have English as their first language. Sometimes their demonstrations can be pretty hard to understand. Getting a good seat for a demonstration poses a challenge on some ships as well. On the Poker Cruise to Mexico that we took on Carnival, I actually bought a towel folding book. Alas, it does not have enough pictures or detailed enough instructions for my towel folding challenged brain to understand. (Although I can fold the animals now I still think the book could use more information.)
I wrote a short blog once with a towel animal poll. (You can still vote, the poll never closes.) Since then I have gotten google hits from people looking for towel folding instructions. So I thought I would dust off the towel folding book and give it another shot.
Amazingly enough I actually made a pretty good body, something I never managed to do before. No comment on the heads.
For body type A, (as shown in the book instructions above) start with a full sized towel laid out flat.
Roll both ends toward the middle.
roll ends toward middle
The rolls should be even in size when they meet at the middle of the towel.
roll ends until even rolls touch in the middle
Fold in half with the rolls to the outside.
fold with rolls to outside
Then pull the corner of each roll until it sticks out a little bit.
pull ends out of rolls
Take hold of two corners next to each other (the ones on the same side of the roll) with one hand, and the other two with the other hand and pull the corners until the rolls pull into legs and the body is tight.
pull the corners tight
Keep pulling until it looks like a finished body with four legs.
finished body
Carnival book rabbit head
Now we need a head for this random headless creature. The bulldog head instructions seemed too hard, so I tried making a rabbit instead. It pretty much turned out looking like a dog.
Use a hand towel for the head. Fold in half crosswise.
fold towel in half
Fold in half crosswise a second time.
Fold the corners down like two triangles. If it looks more like the picture in the book and less like mine it will probably look more like a rabbit and less like a dog.
Tuck the pointed side in and roll both sides to the center.
tuck the pointed side in
Try to do a better job than I did. If you have more towel to pull out the rabbit will have longer ears.
pull up corners for ears
Decorate with sunglasses, or bits of cloth or paper or stickers.
Click link for a new blog with photos and video of stateroom steward folding a towel rabbit.
rabbit looks like a dog
Carnival body B (and C) instructions
I made a donkey for body B, but I got lazy on the body and just took the one I’d already made and put it in a sitting position. It probably would have looked better if I made a new one. The rolls got a bit loose moving it around too much making different animals out of the same body.
body B (sort of)
donkey head
Use a hand towel for the donkey head. Fold it in half lengthwise.
Then fold the corners down so it sort of forms a triangle.
fold corners down
Fold the pointy end down and then fold the corners so it makes a smaller triangle.
pointy end folded down, and one side folded over it
folded into a smaller triangle
Roll both sides to the center.
roll both sides
While holding the rolled sides together, pull the forehead down and tuck it so the head stays rolled.
Shape the mouth and ears, then set it on the body and decorate.
my lame donkey
For anyone else who is as bad at towel animal folding as me, I invented a couple of my own no-fail, so easy anyone can fold it towel animals.
First the snake. Start with a full-sized towel. Roll it so one end is small and pointy and the other end wide.
snake body
Use a washcloth for the head. You can pretty much fold the washcloth however you want so it looks like a head. Folding it in half diagonally and then folding the two ends down to the midpoint works pretty well. Or just crunch it up into a head shape, that works too. Pretty much anything works, different snakes have different shaped heads.
snake head
Put the head on the body, add eyes and a tongue and that’s it, easiest towel animal ever. In this new blog, I have instructions on how to make a snake using just one towel.
my towel snake
For the butterfly, use a brightly colored towel. Fold it in half crosswise.
fold in half crosswise
Then squish in the middle and fluff out the ends like butterfly wings.
butterfly wings
For the body, roll a washcloth with one end pointy and the other end wide. Tuck in the edge on the wide end to make the head.
butterfly body
Put the body on the wings and decorate.
my butterfly
I’m much better at folding towel animals now. Plus I discovered that most of my issues with heads when I wrote this blog were due to the fact that my hand towels are not the right proportions for it.
Towel Crab
This is my new invention, the towel crab. I’m working on a series on folding individual towel animals. Each animal will have step by step instructions with still photos and some have a video of a stateroom steward folding the animal. It’s easy to make sure you don’t miss any upcoming animals. Just follow My Cruise Stories on twitter or networked blogs, “like” My Cruise Stories facebook page, or click the link on the sidebar to get an email or RSS subscription. Posted now: rabbit , frog, easy seal, hanging monkey, one-towel snake, pig, gorilla. turtle, cat, dog, elephant, dinosaur, penguin, bear, pigeon, better seal (sea lion or walrus), turkey and stingray, and more. Another easy-to-make towel folding project, which also comes in useful as a gift, is the towel cake. For more towel animal instructions check out the towel animal page.
copyright 2011 My Cruise Stories
Norwegian Sun’s towel rabbit
Holland America’s towel butterfly
Holland America’s towel dog
Holland America’s towel lobster
Norwegian Sun’s towel elephant
Lauren’s towel elephant from Hotel Padma, Bali
Cruise Stories 