Hot pads tutorial

I know there are only a few days left before Christmas, but there's still a little time left to whip up a few quick gifties.  So I figured why not go ahead and put up my very first tute?

I love to bake, but I hate oven mitts and find most other potholders bulky to use.  I've always wanted something that I could use to quickly grab a cookie sheet out of the oven or a hot plate out of the microwave.  I remembered seeing this blog post a while back about making little round pads that had pockets for your fingers.  I wanted something slightly different, so I thought I'd give it my own spin.  This is a great way to use up scraps and other odds and ends from your stash.  I actually had all the supplies necessary to make these already on hand - ah, the benefits of being a fabric hoarder.

This makes one pair.

Supplies:

• Enough fabric to cut four 4"x7" rectangles and four 4"x 2 1/2" rectangles; half a fat quarter would be more than sufficient
  

[They can be all the same fabric or all different, depending on your preference.
For the purposes of this tute, I'm going to assume you're using 2 different fabrics, one for the front, and one for the back of each pad.]

• Cotton batting - about 1/4 yard

• Insul-Bright - enough for two 4"x7" rectangles

• Binding/bias tape - about 1 yard of 1" single fold (or 1/2" double fold)

Like I mentioned above, this is a great way to use up odds and ends, so the amounts given for the supplies are approximate.  The pieces for the finger pocket are pretty small, so you can definitely get by with scraps.

In case you're unfamiliar with Insul-Bright, it is, as the name implies, insulated batting.  It's good for hot or cold, so you can use it for potholders, lunch bags, etc.  It is usually found with the interfacing and sold by the yard.  I had bought some over a year ago with the intention of making a lunch bag for E, but well, that never happened.  I'm happy to have a use for it now.

I made my own pattern from brown paper grocery bags, but you can just print out the handy dandy electronic version I made by clicking on the image to the right.

Instructions

1.  For each PAIR of hot pads, you'll want to cut:

2 BODY pieces from Fabric 1
2 BODY pieces from Fabric 2
2 BODY pieces from Insul-Bright
4 BODY pieces from Batting
2 POCKET pieces from Fabric 1
2 POCKET pieces from Fabric 2
2 POCKET pieces from Batting

Here are pics of the pieces for just one pad.  Yes, there is a fair amount of cutting involved, but if you're making a bunch, do it in front of the TV; it goes by more quickly that way. ;)

2. Next, take one of each of the POCKET pieces.  Place the fabric RIGHT sides together.  Then take one piece of batting and place on bottom.

3. Stitch along the straight edge, leaving a 1/4" seam allowance.

4. Turn the right sides out, and press.

5. Topstitch along the bottom, leaving a 1/4" seam allowance.  Set aside.

6. Make a sandwich of BODY pieces in the following order:

Fabric - right side DOWN
Batting
Insul-Bright
Batting
Fabric - right side UP

7. Quilt together.  You can do this however you prefer - straight lines, criss-cross, swirls, circles, etc.  I did diagonal lines across, about 1" apart.  Because the sandwich is so thick, I didn't pin, but I tried to hold the pieces together as tightly as possible to minimize shifting.   You may want to trim the edges after quilting.

8. Baste the pocket piece along one end of the body. 

9. Apply binding. Because of the curves on these pads, I recommend stitching the binding on the "right" way, by opening it up sewing along the crease, then folding and stitching again.  There's a great video tutorial on how to do it on the Angry Chicken Blog, so I'm not going to go into detail on the step-by-step, but here are some pics of the process.






Here it what it looked like after I sewed all the way around with the binding unfolded:


And then after I flipped it over to the back:





I'll warn you, the bulk of the pad can make this part a bit tricky, especially if you've never worked with binding before.  I highly recommend using wide binding and going slowly around the curves.  This was easily the most time-consuming part for me, after cutting all the pieces.  It took me a few tries to get it looking nice and clean on both sides.

The key is, when you're folding the binding over and stitching the second time, you want it to be folded over just enough to catch the back edge, but you don't want it folded so far over that you end up with a flap, like this.


Needless to say, that one ended up ripped out and redone. *sigh* 

After folding it over, I pinned it like crazy, even though I generally hate pinning this way and it resulted in me getting jabbed more than a few times.

Side note: I'm obsessive about matching, not to mention stingy, so I made my own bias tape, which in the effort to save time, I merely creased in the middle.  Yes, I'm a glutton for punishment.  Basically, you cut fabric into strips on the bias (45 degree angle), then sew the strips together and press.  I'm not going to go into more detail than that because there are a ton of great tutorials on how to cut and press to make your own binding.  Obviously, the store-bought kind would work just fine too and take a lot less time.

Once that's done, voila!  You have hot pads!  I'm going to have to pull a bit of a bait & switch on you and show a different completed pair since I need to find matching fabric to cut and make binding for the pair shown in the first few pics.




This is definitely a project you could knock out in an evening.  I spent 3 evenings cutting and sewing almost a dozen pairs, assembly-line style.  But again, a lot of that time was spent making binding, so if you use store-bought, you could probably do it a lot faster.

Feel free to make as many of these as you like for friends and family, but please don't sell them.

I hope that this was helpful to someone out there.  I'd love to hear any feedback! This is my first tutorial though, so go easy on me. ;)