WIP WEDNESDAY - FALL EDITION

While I'm working hard to get a jump on Christmas, I haven't let fall sneak in completely unnoticed. This is what I started working on this week - leaf shaped pot holders.
I got the idea for this a couple weeks ago when a friend and I were talking about end of year projects and she asked if the local food pantry needed pot holders. In the past I have crocheted some to be given to clients when they come in to shop. I use up old crochet cotton that's been sitting around for years, or the tail ends of skeins of acrylic worsted yarn. They don't take long to do, but they do take time, and I have other things I'd rather work on right now. Suddenly I remembered that I had bought a large piece of Insul-Fleece a while ago that I had never used and I realized quilted pot holders was the way to go. Pinterest showed me a wealth of ideas, but this leaf stood out as a good way to use up fabric scraps, and so that's what I'm concentrating on.

I didn't try to get fancy with the colors. I pulled open the drawer that held browns thinking I would pull a few from there and then see what was in other drawers, but there was more than enough in the browns to get me started. You can click here to see a full tutorial on how to make these, so I won't give away the secret sauce, but they really are very easy to make. The hardest part is probably putting on the binding. I don't have a finished one yet; this one hasn't yet been trimmed:
I have never worked with Insul-Fleece, but it behaves pretty much like any batting. It acts as a heat barrier, but does not absorb heat by itself. You have to add another layer of batting with it or you'll still end up burning your hands. And it has aluminum in it so it cannot be used in the microwave. But it helps things like pot holders, hot mats, and mug rugs do a better job, so it's worth looking for if you're making that kind of thing. As for batting I just pulled a piece of cotton from my scrap pile. 

There's only one problem I can see with this project. When you get through cutting out the leaves, you end up with this:
Now I have to figure out what I'm going to do with that!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
WIP WEDNESDAY I'm focusing on quilting this week, so my WIP is something that I work on in between bigger projects. The pattern name is Tessellating Flowers, and it's one that I have loved since I first saw it at a friend's house many years ago. In fact the fabric I'm using is some I bought on my way home from her house after that visit.  I had a hard time finding the name of the pattern. It wasn't in any of my books, and Pinterest didn't yet exist. I eventually learned the name from looking at pictures on Google, but they wanted $5 for the pattern, which I wasn't willing to spend. I knew it was simple, but what I didn't know was the proportions of the pieces. I did several experiments, then eventually put it away and worked on other things. This spring the fabric made it to the top of a pile and I did some more exploring on the internet to see what I could find out. This time Pinterest came to my rescue and confirmed what I had suspected - that t...
Read more
Image
HOW DID THIS HAPPEN? This is my "wall of shame." I really shouldn't call it that because it's what I look at when I sit at my sewing machine and I don't like the idea of looking at something with negative connotations. Usually it's just the fabric storage area. Until I look at all those clear plastic boxes. They're what make me groan.  Those boxes hold UFO's. And they've been there with very little change since I moved into this house and put this studio together over 10 years ago. You can see they are all labeled and stacked neatly. And the fabric is all folded and organized by color family and/or type of fabric. The wall is 20 feet long. And it's full - floor to ceiling. And that's not all of it. There's another corner that holds overflow; mostly leftover batting and other odds and ends. And a couple of project boxes. And if I really wanted to tell all I would show the shower in the bathroom that holds boxes of dress fabric and...
Read more
Image
HOLIDAY PREPARATIONS CONTINUE Here in Arkansas we are in the middle of full-on harvest season. Yesterday the highway was full of combines and grain trucks, and I saw my first cotton field that had been sprayed to open the bolls. Things got off to a late start, so it's a mad dash to get everything in before we get a tropical storm or some other untoward event.  But in my quilt studio it is holiday season. I don't do a lot with fall, although I have some ideas you will see in due time. But Christmas is a huge deal. And it makes me ridiculously happy that I got this top done early enough that it may even be quilted before 2017 is over.  I bought this as a kit several years ago when I was visiting a friend who was fortunate enough to live in a town with a lovely small quilt shop. I don't often work with kits, but this appealed to me and it wasn't frightfully expensive, so I bought it. The title is Holiday Frost and the fabrics are by Henry Glass; I don't oft...
Read more