Abstract Nowadays, the flexible electric-power sources such as supercapacitors (SCs) have attracted increasing attention. Graphene fibers, graphene film and graphene hydrogel have been widely applied as flexible electrode materials for SCs. However, it is still a big challenge to produce large-scale graphene based flexible electrodes. In this work, we novelly coated the reduced graphene oxide (rGO) nanosheets on the commercial compressed non-woven towel (CNWT), a super hydrophilic non-woven cotton fabric material, through a facile repeated “dyeing and drying” method. The rGO coated CNWT (G/CNWT) performed excellent flexibility, stability and reasonable conductivity. Purposefully, the OH-functionalized graphene quantum dots (OH-GQDs) were inserted between the graphene nanosheets and the OH-GQDs and rGO co-coated CNWT (GG/CNWT) displayed better electrochemical performance. Furthermore, homogenous polyaniline (PANI) nanoparticles were electrodeposited on the GG/CNWT (PGG/CNWT) for high areal capacitance (Ca) SCs. Finally, the electrochemical performances of G/CNWT, GG/CNWT and PGG/CNWT based electrodes were investigated and analyzed under a conventional three-electrode test. The Ca of PGG/CNWT reached to 195 m F cm−2 at 0.1 mA cm−2 and showed excellent electrochemical stabilities with a high capacity retention of 96.5 % after 6000 cycles at a current density of 5 mA cm-2. Our work showed that the super hydrophilic CNWT could be a newly flexible supporting substrate for fabricating the rGO-functionalized textile electrode. In addition, the current simple and easy to scale-up method for fabricating the PGG/CNWT electrode made it used in flexible and wearable electronics as well as other applications.