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
