Sunday, January 1, 2017

Play Kitchen Potholders


A friend of mine built the most epic play kitchen for her son out of an old TV entertainment center.  When she asked me if I could make him some potholders I gave a resounding YES!  She suggested making the potholders with the cardinal directions N, S, E and W on them since those also happen to correspond to the frist initials of the kids and the dog.  I thought this sounded like a plast and went to start creating.


I wasn't sure about the scale of the project, but I started with two fat quarters and a 1/4 yard of the cherry fabric.  I'm limited by the 9" length of the 1/4 yard, but that is bigger than I'd want for this project anyway.


I have a lot cotton batting scraps left over from Rowdy's dinosaur quilt and I saved them just for a project like this.  If I don't have enough to cut a 6.5" inch square I can stitch the batting together to make it work.


I decided to make 6" potholders so I cut 4 - 7" squares out of the front fabric, the batting and the back fabric.  This will give me a 1/2" seam allowance on all sides.  My cotton batting was wide enough for this project so I didn't have to stitch any together.


I struggled with the N and the W for some reason.  I should have just freehanded it but I was trying to use the sides as guides and it resulted in me second guessing myself.  The max heigh of each letter is 4".


I ironed the letters on the bias. I felt that this would be a nice way for me to make the arrows and really show that these are directions in addition to initials.  After ironing on the letters, I basted the top squares to the batting with a 1/4" seam.  I plan to applique through both layers.


I used my zig-zag stitch (#8) with a length of 3.5 and a distance between stitches of of 0.4. Normally I don't use a stitch this wide when I'm sewing the zigzags.  I found it really awkward at the corners where it wasn't a 90 degree angle.


I played around with different stitches on my machine to use for the arrows, and ultimately ended up using the astisk stitch.  With some practice on scrap fabric, I was able to figure out when it the stitching I could turn the fabric 90 degrees to finish the arrow without losing any points in the stars.  The arrows are subtle on top of the busy kitchen fabric, but I like how they came out.


What am I going to do for loops?  Do I have any ribbon in the house? I KNOW that I have some orange ribbon somewhere because I used it for the napkin loops in one of my first ever sewing projects.  I really need to take some time to organize my craft supplies, I feel like things are spread out everywhere around the house.  The ribbon could be with the ribbons (nope), or the Halloween decorations (maybe) or in one of my many miscellaneous craft stashes in the attic.


I did have a lot of ribbon left over from making garters for my bridesmaids, so I decided to take this blue ribbon (which is close to the bright blue on the front of the pot holders) and use it for the loops.  Orange would have been nicer, but I hope to finish these up tonight and I won't have time to go find more orange ribbon.

I cut four 5" pieces of ribbon and pinned them to the corner of my quilted piece.  I then pinned the front and back of these pot holders right sides together.  I stitched around with a 1/2" seam leaving a ~3" gap.  I trimmed the corners and turned them right side out and pressed.  I finished the pot holders with a 1/4" seam around the entire edge (which helped to close the opening.

In progress of the final steps.  Corners clipped (N), turned RS out (S), Pressed (E) and with the final 1/4" border (W)

This ended up being a fast project and I was able to complete all 4 play potholders in a day.  Wahoo!  I haven't had much time for sewing lately so it felt great to do a project from start to finish.


My friend LOVED this gift.  The toddler's Dad was very relieved that I wasn't sending his kids to go cook on the stove and that these were for the play kitchen.  I'm now feeling very inspired and can't wait to finish up some of my crafting to do list so I can create some items for Lucky's kitchen.


Project started and completed 12-6-16