Oven Mitts Tutorial

If a picture says a 1,000 words, you're in for a feature length novel here....

I first saw some hot pads like this at Porter's (in Rexburg) back in August.  I thought they combined functional and cute pretty well.  Then I forgot about them.  I ran across them again a week ago and pinned them on Pinterest.  The gal that writes The Idea Room even included a download-able pattern.  Brilliant.  Being me, I couldn't leave well enough alone, so I'll show you what tweaks I made (and I do mean show you - I took twenty thousand pictures of the process...more or less).

I cut out all the pieces to make 2 different oven mitts, then shuffled the pieces a bit.

The first change I made was to enlarge the pattern. 
I put the pattern in my printer and set it to enlarge to 120%.

 For each oven mitt, cut out 2 pieces of exterior fabric for the body, 1 piece of Insul-Bright, and 1 piece of cotton batting.  For the pockets you'll need 4 pieces of exterior fabric and 2 pieces of cotton batting. I used just over 1 yard of bias tape.


The next step was to make my own bias tape.  I am not against store bought, but that would have meant going to the store...I'm not going into a tutorial on making bais tape - there are plenty of those out there (here's a youtube video tutorial)

  

After getting everything cut, I made up the pockets.  First I layered the fabric, just like the picture - one piece of exterior fabric face down, one piece of cotton batting then a final piece of exterior fabric face up.

Next, I basted around the curved edge and then, starting at the stitched line, sewed some curvy channels (on the coordinating oven mitt I sewed straight channels).

Bias Tape! Open up one side of the bias tape, line it up with the top of the pocket and stitch along the fold line.  You may notice that I didn't bother to pin.

Now fold the bias tape over the edge and top stitch it in place.

For the body of the oven mitt you'll need 4 layers. 
The Insul-Bright needs to be next to the outside fabric, with the foil facing out.
Pin all four layers together and baste around the outside.

Baste pockets on. (If you have a serger, this would be a good time to use it...)

Trim.

Bias Tape! Sew the bias tape the same way as the pockets, easing around the curves.

Trim part of the seam (this is where it's nice to have a serger - it was easy to see exactly where to trim)



(This is the first one I made, that I didn't serge - it still worked, but it was a little fiddl-ier to trim the seam)

 

Run out of thread.

 

Finish bias tape by folding it over the edge and topstitching.

Done! I'm using these for Visiting Teaching gifts.