Potholders, finally!

Recently, I needed a little break from quilts for others. I really enjoy making quilts that go off to get loved and snuggled, but sometimes you have to make something for yourself.

I started by cleaning, well, really digging, through some piles and ran across potholders that I started…oh, ummm… I’m actually not really sure. Judging from the fabrics used and the poor tension of the quilting, I’m estimating these are about 3 years old.

They had gotten a little wear in the pile — loose threads, frayed edges. So I trimmed them up. I dug some binding fabric out of my scrap bin and made some double fold binding (I cut it 2″ wide).

First step was to bind the top of the pockets. See, my husband is not really safety inclined when it comes to the oven… he’s constantly burning the top of his fingers, so a quilted pocket top is pretty needed.

Then comes the fiddly part. Putting the binding around everything. I initially tried to just clip the binding in place all around then stitch down. That turned out… well, it’s only a potholder. It doesn’t need to be perfect.

For the next one, I tried a more quilty binding technique. Very precise technical terms. I stitched the binding to the back first, then top stitched to the front.  It turned out much less wibbly wobbly, and I’ll definitely do it this way again.

Oh, I forgot to mention. There’s a layer of Insulbright in the gray sections. Make sure you keep the metallic side down (facing where the hot dish would be). Then there’s a scrap of batting on top of that.

The one on the left has the quilt-esque binding, the one on the right is the “winged it”.  And both loops are just what made sense in the moment.

After waiting three years, this whole project, including pictures, took only about 2 hours. And now I have two potholders! Ta-da!

Linking to Finish it Up Friday