Quilted Potholder from Fabric Scraps

I’m not a great sewer. I don’t think I have to tell you that. But I’m trying. So, I keep looking for beginner sewing projects to work on straight lines, catching all the layers of fabric, and following directions. Well, I got two out of three this time. So that’s kinda great!

I sort of used this tutorial from Make (mushroom/scissors image up there), but mostly just kind of wung it (is that the past tense of ‘wing it’?!). When I make more I’ll bind using this tutorial from Simple Simon.

Supplies:
Scrap fabric
Batting (I used some left over fleece)
Backing fabric
Binding (I used one jelly roll strip), or you could make without binding with the Make tutorial

I pieced 3 scraps that I really liked together. Combined they were roughly 9 x 10. Then I cut the fleece and a larger scrap for the back to match.

I pieced these three and sewed the wrong sides of the gray circle and the blue solid to the larger black & white piece to create the front. I used a 1/4 sew allowance throughout.

Then I sandwiched the backing face-side down, then the fleece, and the top face-side up. I didn’t use quilt basting or pins because my fleece was staticy enough that they all stayed together. Then I stitched straight lines to quilt it all together.

Instead of cutting my own bias tape, I used a precut jelly roll strip that is 2.5″ x 44″. I folded the strip in half and pressed it firmly. Here’s a good binding tutorial video that can explain this process much better than I could.

I machine sewed the binding to the back (based on the video) and then hand stitched to the front. My corners didn’t quite work so I just folded them over onto itself and sewed ’em down. Oh, also you can tell where I started and stopped because I cut my pieces too short to use the tip in the video. Oops!

BUT I sewed some really darn near straight lines and caught all the layers of fabric the first time around. It’s the little things, you know? So what if I wasn’t so great with directions?

The good thing is that my pots can still be held! And they don’t care in the slightest that I kinda made this one up. It’s all kinds of crazy, but I still love it!