easy quilted potholders

During the holiday season I wanted to add a handmade gift to the Christmas boxes I was giving to my sisters and parents. But I was in a time crunch (when are any of us NOT in a time crunch during December though?!) when I realized that I better decide what to make because they days were flying by.

One day I was using hot pads that were gifted to me a few years ago by my own crafty Mom, and I decided to attempt some myself. After a few google searches later and a couple of questions asked at my local quilt shop, here is the first set I came up with:

I used a mix of quilting cotton scraps to piece together the top and made my finished hot pad top 10"x10". Inside each hot pad was one layer of Warm & Natural cotton batting and one layer of Insul Bright batting. I backed it with a solid piece of fabric.

After quilting through all the layers with rows of straight stitching (used a walking foot to help evenly stitch through the thick layers), I used 2" strips (turned into 1/2" finished binding) to bind the hot pads and create a hanging loop.

They turned out to be fast gifts and took only about an hour for each one. The trickiest part to me was pinning carefully to make the binding match up on the top and bottom so that when I stitched through the binding it would look good on both the top and bottom. One thing I learned was that if I hand basted the binding on, I was able to very accurately sew the binding on and not annoy myself with so many pins not behaving.

By Christmas I made 7 sets. After Christmas I decided to make myself a set too. Didn't get pics of them all but here are a few more shots. I believe these ones ended up measuring 7.5"x9".

Next time around I think I'll put an additional layer of insulation or batting though. Most of the websites I looked at for inspiration only recommended 2 layers but when I use my own set, I feel like the heat starts to come through a little sooner than I'd like.

PROJECT NOTES:

Favorite websites for inspiration: 

33 Shades of Green

Film in the Fridge

Oh Fransson

Supplies:

Insul-Bright Batting

Quilting fabric used for some of the potholders was from the Reunion line by Moda.