Pretty Potholders [Archive Post]

This is the first of a new blog series that I'd like to call "Archive Posts". I have a few things and pieces that never got blogged due to my long blogging hiatus, and this is my way of finally getting them here.

Today, I'll show you these lovely potholders & matching kitchen accessories I made for my boyfriend's mom 3 years ago as a Christmas gift. I am currently in the process of making her a new Christmas-themed set, as these potholders got badly burned on her stove after just 3 weeks in service. She still has the tea towel and tea pot cozy, though.

All materials and patterns came from Stof&Stil. The pattern is 90197, a kitchen essentials set including 2 styles of potholders, a bread basket and a tea pot cozy. I changed the pattern a bit by eliminating all the patch-work and by changing the shape of the potholders to have a round top, as I wanted a more traditional look with a fabric strap instead of the curtain rings. I did not make the long potholder (yet!) or the bread basket.

The main fabric of the set is a heavy weight linen-look cotton fabric with a traditional fluted design printed in dark grey. A coordinating heavy dark grey yarn-dyed cotton, some darker grey bias binding and a few scraps of natural colored linen completed the fabric palette.

Thermal isolation interlining is recommended for the potholders and I went a step up and added 2 layers of interlining on the hand palm side (the big layer) and 1 layer on the back hand side (the partial layer) of each potholder.

The interlining was quilted to the fabric, but the 2 layers of interlining made it too thick to quilt in one go, so for the hand palm side, the inner and outer fabric layer was quilted separately to 1 layer of interlining. This also made it possible to have separate quilt designs for each print/color, so that the plain grey is quilted in a diamond pattern and the print fabric is quilted along the grey lines in the fabric.
For the partial back hand part, a fabric-interlining-fabric quilt sandwich was quilted to the outer fabric design.

The partial layer was bound in grey or linen bias tape and all outer edges was bound in the grey bias binding, first by machine and then with hand sewn top stitching in linen thread and grey yarn over the machine stitching as an extra hand-made touch.

The tea pot cozy was sewn in the grey cotton quilted with 1 layer of thermal isolation interlining in a diamond pattern, lined in a thin layer of soft linen and bound in the dark grey bias tape. It was decorated with a band of print fabric bordered by more bias tape and hand-sewn linen top stitching. 

The tea towel is just a 45*60 cm rectangle of the print fabric with narrow double turned hems and a bias binding loop for hanging. I mitered the corners for a nice finish.

All in all, it was a lovely gift for my boyfriend's mom. The print was very much to her style and the dark grey color is very understated and trendy. The most time-consuming step was the quilting, and such small pieces didn't actually take very long time to quilt.

I hope I have inspired you to make a pair of kitchen accessories for yourself or someone you love.

Do you sew Christmas gifts?

/Angelica

Homemade Christmas: Nerdy Little Things

Me-made Christmas gifts for my little brother (left) and my twin brother (right).

We got our first Nintendo console in 1997. It was a N64, and it was glorious! We had just learned to ride our bikes, and as an extra encouragement, we each got to name ourselves a price. My brother chose the Super Mario 64 game for N64 and I chose these for PC.

The PC games didn't last long (my parents wouldn't let me get refills for the printable fabrics), but the love for Nintendo still lives on. Many games followed, but no game was more loved by my brother than Yoshi Story.

Yoshi has been his favorite Nintendo character ever since. So when I saw this Giant Yoshi Plush pattern and tutorial on Instructables, I knew I had to make it. It was meant to be. However, the finished Yoshi is well over a meter tall. I didn't want to commit to making such a large toy without consulting my brother first, so I scaled the large pattern down to app. 45-50% by printing 4 pattern pages on each A4 page. My finished yoshi is app. 45 cm tall.

Crappy camera picture from cutting of the green fleece.

The fabric is all from Stof2000, a danish fabric chain store. I got 50 cm of green fleece, 25 cm of red, orange and white fleece and 50 cm of yellow felt (they didn't have yellow fleece). I used ALL of the green and white, but still have a lot of orange, red and yellow left over. The knit fabric and wool felt for eyes, nose and stuffing guards were all pulled from my remnants.

Front view. Metric cutting mat for scale. 

For stuffing, the content of 2,5 cheap Ikea pillows did the trick.  

I added little bags of rice in the hair, saddle and tail to weight him backwards and down. I should have added more to the hair or back head, as he tilts forward a bit due to his nose. 

Side view.

I sewed most of it by machine, but the sleeve-to-body and head-to-body seams were sewed by hand as they didn't fit into the machine. The eyes and nose were sewed on by hand. 

Back view. 

I am really happy to report that my twin brother absolutely loves it! I haven't seen him so happy or surprised for a really long time, and he has jokingly requested the whole range of Yoshis plus a full size green one.

Hand applique on pillow in progress. 

For my younger (and equally as nintendo-obsessed) brother, I made a Zelda shield pillow (see picture at the top of this post). He had written "Zelda merchandise" on his wishlist, so I tried to recreate this pillow, but in the Ocarina of Time design. The inside pillow case is made from unbleached muslin and the pillow cover is made from wool remnants. The blue is from a medieval heraldic surcotte, the red is from my boyfriends medieval tunic, the grey is from a second-hand skirt refashion gone wrong and the yellow is from an unused, disposable cleaning cloth.

Hand drawing the pattern and motifs.

I drew the shield shape and design by hand on pattern vlies (swedish tracing paper?) and used iron-on interfacing on the shield rim and motifs. I did all the appliqué by hand with small, even fell stitches.
The cover closes in the back with a wide lapped zipper. The pillow is stuffed with the remaining half Ikea pillow left over from the Yoshi.

My younger brother was happily surprised with his pillow and actually slept on it on Christmas eve. He has *also* requested more, as he would like to have all 3 shield designs from OoT. My twin brother has also requested a pillow, but he first wants it AFTER his red yoshi.

It is tough to have brothers sometimes ;)