Itty Bitty Oven Mitts!

I am so excited to take part in Spice Up Your Kitchen with Anna at Noodlehead! I ~love~ Anna's blog, and she is a great bloggy friend. I highly recommend checking out her projects -- especially her zippy wallet, which I have made numerous times (addicting!!), and her GENIUS drawstring backpack, which is on my to-make list!


For my kitchen-y project, I chose to do a (very!) little something to spice up the fridge.

How about the cutest little tiny oven mitts ever??
They're magnets!

Here's what you need:
~ Fabric scraps -- main fabric and trim fabric
(you literally only need a few inches of fabric!)
~ Scrap of cardstock
~ small magnet
~ chopstick or other pointy object for turning
~ hot glue gun

STEP ONE: Pick your fabric. I had a ridiculously good time pawing through my ridiculously tiny little I-Spy fabric scraps!

STEP TWO: Create your pattern. I looked at one of my own oven mitts and drew up a quick little pattern. (This photo shows my pattern on standard graph paper -- 1/4" squares.)

STEP THREE: Cut a window of your pattern from your scrap of cardstock so you can "audition" your scraps for motif placement.

STEP FOUR: Once you've decided on a motif you like, flip over your fabric and your window and trace the pattern on the back of your fabric, using a pencil.

STEP FIVE: Trim your fabric parallel to the top edge of the mitt, a scant 1/4" from the line.

STEP SIX: Turn your mitt fabric right side up and layer your trim fabric scrap face down on top, aligning the fabrics on the edge. Sew, using a scant 1/4" seam allowance. Repeat using more scraps for the opposite side of the oven mitt. (No need to center a motif on the back side of the mitt -- no one will ever see it!)

STEP SEVEN: Press your seam allowances toward the trim fabric.

STEP EIGHT: Layer your two pieces right sides together, aligning the seam lines as shown.

STEP NINE: Shorten your stitch length and sew on your pencil lines, starting and stopping about 1/2" inside the trim fabric.

STEP TEN: Trim close to your stitching line and clip around curves. Be sure to clip right up in the corner where the thumb and the rest of the mitt meet so the thumb will turn correctly.

STEP ELEVEN: Gently turn the mitt right side out. Use a chopstick or other "pointy yet blunt" object to carefully poke out the thumb.

STEP TWELVE: Use a few scraps to "stuff" the mitt and give it the thickness it needs to look realistic. I fold a scrap over my chopstick...

...and gently poke it into the mitt, keeping it as flat as possible.

STEP THIRTEEN: Trim the trim (ha!) to about 1/2",

and tuck in the raw edges. Make the trim look as narrow and realistically-scaled as you can.

STEP FOURTEEN: Press it flat!
(Awwww, look at the reflection of Kitty sleeping on her pillow on the ironing board!!)

STEP FIFTEEN: Use some of your trim fabric to create a narrow strip for the oven mitt loop. Fold one edge as narrowly as you can, then fold again, and sew. Trim after sewing, as close to the stitching line as possible. I make it much longer than I need so that it is easier to hold and manage when sewing.

STEP SIXTEEN: Fold your loop strip in half and attach to the top edge (same side as the thumb) with a needle and thread. I sew it to the corner, to only the back side of the mitt.

STEP SEVENTEEN: Trim away the excess loop ends and hot glue a magnet to the back.

DONE! It's ready to hold up your grocery list!

*ahem* -- I may have gotten a little carried away with the itty bitty oven mitts! There were just TOO MANY cute options in my I-Spy scrap bin -- and they are so fun and quick to make!!

Pot Holder Quiet Book -- TUTORIAL

My final project for POT HOLDER WEEK!

Quiet books are a ~L~O~T~ of work. First there's the "fun part" of it all: coming up with ideas, drawing, cutting, carrying it all out -- HOURS of work, to say the least! Then there's the "less-fun part" of making quiet books: batting, binding, quilting, "finishing" work.... UGH. Here's a way to minimize the the "less-fun" work so you can focus your time and energy on the "fun stuff" -- by using POT HOLDERS as the base of your pages!

Here are photos of the pages I've done so far:

Here's my cover -- probably temporary.


Build A Snowman page
(I love colored velcro!)

I think I will still make more "wardrobe" options for him!

Santa's Cookies page
(Really, I just wanted an excuse to make little felt gingerbread men!)

I especially like the one with green buttons!

Wrap/Unwrap A Present page
(This page is my boys' favorite!)

All the potential gifts....

The bow velcros shut. I learned my lesson quickly that it would have to, or I'd be tying bows all day long!

Toy car!

The temporary back cover.
Since I wasn't sure exactly what my next page would be, I sewed a simple little pocket on the back of the present page.


Okay, are you ready?

Let's start with the BASICS:

Choosing your pot holders:

~ Go cheap! Chances are you're going to need a lot of them! I found mine at the dollar store -- 2/$1!
~ Pick a size that will be suitable for your page ideas.
~ As far as what they look like: Really, the binding (edge) color is all that REALLY matters. Pick something you like!
~ If you plan to use the quilted (back) side of the pot holders, keep that in mind as well.
~ Depending on how you plan to bind your pages together, the loop placement may or may not make a difference.


Basic page construction:

1. Place your pot holder on top of your background fabric and whack around it. Leave a small edge for turning.

2. I don't have a photo of this part, but sew everything you need to onto your background fabric before attaching it to your pot holder. For example, if you are doing a snowman scene, sew the snowy ground on, as well as velcro or other needed fasteners, BEFORE you sew the whole background to the page.


3. Here's where you have to think ahead! The back side of the page you are working on will be the next page of your book. Sew on anything that needs to be sewn on now! If you wait until after you sew your background onto the other side, you will have telltale stitch mark "shadows!"

4. When you're ready to sew on your background, pin it flat onto your pot holder, with the pins in from the edge about 1". I placed four pins, one on each side.

5. Fold the edge of your background under, so that the fold overlaps the pot holder binding just a little bit. Sew right on the fold. You can get those corners to curve around just by fiddling and folding. Fold a few inches in front of the presser foot as you sew. (Isn't all this much easier than starting from scratch??)

Basic felt piece construction:

I sew all my removable felt pieces in two layers. On one piece I sew the velcro, and on the other piece I sew the "good stuff." I always sew the "scratchy" side of the velcro on my pieces, and the "soft" side on my backgrounds.

Then I layer the two pieces together and sew around the edges.

A double layer gives extra durability, plus it means your velcro stitch mark "shadows" won't show on the front of your pieces!

For my pages, the right side of each activity "spread" has the background, and the left side has some manner of storing the pieces. For my snowman page, I simply sewed little pieces of velcro to the quilted side of the pot holder for all the snowman parts to stick to. (I also used my free-motion foot so I could zip around those silly little velcros -- no stopping, lifting the foot, and turning the pot holder a million times for me!)

Ta-Da! Snowman bits stored!

For my gingerbread man cookies I sewed all the good stuff on the front piece first.

Then I sewed a velcro piece on a larger piece of felt, turned it so the velcro was down, and laid my gingerbread man on top. This way I could sew around the little fella without worrying about whether the front piece was lining up perfectly with the back piece. (I tucked the edges of the rick-rack frosting under as I sewed too.)

Then after they were all sewed on I cut around them again.

Here they are on their background before I sewed it onto my pot holder.


EASY Zippered Pouch:

You just need a zipper and a piece of felt!

Sew a small rectangle of felt on the top edge of the zipper.

Sew a larger rectangle of felt on the lower edge of the zipper.

Cut out a rectangle.

Sew all the way around.

Trim edges if desired.
DONE!
Felt doesn't fray, so you don't need to worry about finishing any of the edges!


As for binding all the pages together, I am currently just using a carabiner to hold mine together because I still plan to make more pages. You could do the same, or use a metal book ring. I plan to bind mine permanently somehow so it looks less pot holder-y -- but I don't have a plan yet. It's one of those things I will have to figure out as I go along!
Any ideas?

I hope all of this is enough information and inspiration to make you brave enough to try creating a quiet book! They are so much fun to make, and so much fun to play with!