First comes the baking, and a 500 degree oven and a cast iron pan, then comes the realization that... OW!! Holy crap, I need some new pot holders! And some oven mitts wouldn't be a bad idea either!
After browsing the innernets for a while, I quickly became smitten with the "Too Hot To Handle" oven mitts in the Denyse Schmidt Quilt Along pool over on Flickr, and I decided that it would be a marvy idea to pop some of these together myself.

This was what people call a "learning experience". This project was made much harder than it needed to be because I am so damned stubborn and bull headed, I kept going even though the project ran into some problems. The stupid thing is that I KNEW it wasn't going to work, but I just kept plugging along anyhow, thinking that by my sheer will, the oven mitt would cooperate with me!

I love how the mitts I'd seen were imperfect and obviously hand made and quirky and charming. I also have one hell of a time when I feel that I haven't done something as well as I could have. It just bugs me to no end when I'm sewing, and things don't work out just so. Oh the dichotomy! Again, this was an experience in humility for me, as you shall see.

I decided, in a fit of thrift, that I was going to recycle and reuse older fabrics for these mitts. No problems there, right? The piecing went together smoothly. (more on the fabric choices in a moment)
My problem came when I decided that a few layers of felted sweater would do JUST FINE thank you very much, for the batting. And how about a denim backing! Cozy!

Well, bulletproof was more like it. I could barely get the binding on the outside and I ended up stitching the entire binding on the oven mitt by hand. There was no way inner seams were happening with this bad boy. What the hell was I thinking. I know better than this!

The matching pot holder didn't have eleventeen layers, like the oven mitt, and that wasn't so bad. I did attempt to use some verrrrry old binding that I had from my stash (my grandmothers stash, actually) The price on the package was 13 cents, if that gives you any idea how old it was. Well that binding got halfway sewed on and then I got to a bit of a rotten part in the fabric that was just brittle and shattery and I ended up tossing the whole project aside last night and going to bed. Hmmph.

Today I bit the bullet, went to the fabric store, bought new binding and a yard of Insul-bright. Wow, how cool is this stuff. And so THIN. No more bulletproof oven mitts! I plan on doing more mitts and potholders soon and hopefully they won't give me any more trouble! At least my mitt and pot holder are useable, so I'm going to stop tweeking over them, and I'll know what to do and what NOT to do on the next ones.

And about the fabrics... YUM! All but the red Japanese print are vintage fabrics from my grandmother's stash. When I was talking to my sister, We laughed a bit about it because I told her they were kitchen accessories from the "Grandma's Muu Muu Collection"
My grandmother, for a few years, was overly fond of Muu muus. Picture a 6'2, very large woman with flaming red hair, in bright tropical muu muus and gigantic pink furry bedroom slippers, and you'll have more of an idea of the sort of family we come from. It's a wonder I turned out as normal (heee!) as I did!

Back soon with some more
01.29.07 @ 06:49 PM PST [link] |