Holiday Gift Idea- Quilted Potholders!

Every year, I post something holiday gift related. This year, I have another fun and easy handmade gift idea for you: quilted potholders! I have made quite a few of these for friends, family, craft sales and myself. I have a very well-loved (i.e. a little food stained) potholder in my kitchen that I use everyday, so these potholders are pretty and functional!

These potholders are quilted, have a pocket and loop and are finished with binding. Since the way I do the binding is best explained visually, I’ve included a couple of videos for this tutorial. Part 1 shows how I do the quilting and has tips for marking lines, using a walker foot and more. Part 2 shows how to do the binding and has tips for binding the pocket, attaching the loop, getting the nice mitered edges and pinning.

Materials

• 1/4 yard cotton fabric
• Thread
• 1/4 yard of Insul-Bright insulated batting
• 1 1/2 yard of binding– I say 1 yard in the video but you need more like 1 1/2 yard, I was forgetting to calculate the extra for the pocket and the loop.
• Walker-foot (optional)

Finished potholder dimensions are 8″x8″

Instructions

1. Cut out 2 8″x8″ and 2 6 1/2″x8″ pieces from your fabric.
2. Cut out 1 8″x8″ and 1 6 1/2″x8″ pieces from your Insul-Bright. If you are using a different brand of insulated batting you may need two layers.
3. With right sides facing out, sandwich the insulated batting between your fabric. (see Potholder Tutorial Video Part 1)
4. Quilt the fabric (see Potholder Tutorial Video Part 1)
5. Bind the pocket (see Potholder Tutorial Video Part 2)
6. Attach the loop (see Potholder Tutorial Video Part 2)
7. Pin on the pocket and bind the potholder (see Potholder Tutorial Video Part 2)

These are my first video attempts and I would love to say that these were “quick little videos”, but that wouldn’t be true at all. This is all new to me, so there has definitely been a learning curve. Like I always say, if you wait for everything to be perfect, nothing will ever get done. So I am putting these out there, knowing that I will improve as I do it. You have to do something to get good at it! I already have so many ideas for the how I want to do things differently next time (like show my face). 😉

I hope you all enjoy these and can learn from them. If you make a potholder from this tutorial I would love to see it. In the meantime, have a Happy Holiday everyone!