The Great Oven Mitt Experiment

A couple of years ago, I decided to give an oven mitt filled with homemade cookies to my husband's aunts and uncles for Christmas. As with many of my well-intentioned homemade gifts, time ran out and I only got as far as buying the oven mitts.
These weren't particularly spectacular oven mitts--they had a good shape but the solid green and solid red was pretty boring--yawn. They even spent a few months in a give away pile but every time I would pass by the pile, I would feel guilty and wasteful. So, I decided to re-purpose these oven mitts into something a little more funky and modern.

So I ripped out all the seams and ended up with 16 pieces, 8 fronts and 8 backs.
And then another year passed and the oven mitt pieces sat in a bag in the guest room...

This weekend, I found myself with some free time and considered working on cleaning out the guest room/craft room, but instead I pulled out the oven mitt pieces. At some point during the last year, I had started to play around with some fabric combinations. The fabric mix was Amy Butler, an Ikea tea towel, solid Kona cotton, fabric from SuperBuzzy (including the red matryoshka fabric I used for a pencil roll), and some random scraps.
I laid out all the fabric combination, stitched them together, and ironed the seams open.

The oven mitt pieces were pinned to the fabric, cut out......
and then quilted.
I placed the right sides together, stitched up the edges, turned it right side out and before I knew it, one oven mitt was done!
I was on a roll, so I knocked one more out...
Overall, I am really happy with how these turned out!. The second one turned out better than the first. I increased the tension on my sewing machine because I wasn't happy with how the seams turned out in the first oven mitt. Now that I've finished a couple, the others should go more quickly.It felt good to complete a project using only supplies that I have on hand. I will finish out these re-purposed oven mitts and next time I want to try to make some from scratch with Insul-brite and batting (I know I have some squirreled away somewhere). The batting from these store bought oven mitts was almost too bulky for my sewing machine.

Two down and six to go. I should be able to finish these up by Christmas...2010!

Reversible Cover for my Idea Journal

Sometimes at night when I am trying to fall asleep, my body is tired but my mind has no intention of slowing down. These are the times when crafty thoughts keep me awake. Many, many times I've jumped out of bed to jot down an idea, make a note of something to look up the next day, or sketch out a pattern, embellishment, quilt idea, etc, etc...


I keep track of my crafty thoughts in a spiral bound journal that my grandmother gave me. It was a cute journal but I decided to make it a little more spiffy by making a cover out of some my favorite fabric. I found a great reversible journal tutorial from Lara Cameron at Kirin Notebook

The main fabric I wanted to use was some Amy Butler Belle fabric. I love the turquoise pods on black. My cousin gave me a fat quarter of a tonal turquoise batik that I used for the pockets. The retro flowers on a brown background made a perfect combination for my journal.

The cover was easy to make thanks to the great tutorial but I did run into a couple of problems.
The tutorial uses metric measurements...this shouldn't be a problem, right? I am an engineer and convert units on a regular basis. But maybe my calcs were off. So I think I may have been off in my measurements. After I had sewn all the pieces together I was a little disappointed when I slipped the cover on a realized that it was too tight---and my journal wouldn't close!

So....instead of ripping out the seams and making adjustments to the cover, I decided to make the adjustments to the journal itself. I shaved off a little bit from edges of the front and back card board covers. When it still didn't fit, I removed the wire spiral and used little pieces of string to bind the pages together. After these little tweaks, the journal slipped in beautifully and I love it! The journal was over half way full before I got around to covering it but I am so glad that I finally did!

The last of the Aunt Grace Friends Around the World fabric

The Aunt Grace Friends Around the World line by Judie Rothermel in 2005 was so much fun. I attempted to buy a yard from each country and I got pretty darn close! As part of the Great Craft Room Clean Out program I am subjecting myself to, I ended up getting rid of close to 20 yards out of this line alone! Four yards are left and going for $3/yard. There's lots more pictures on my Flickr page - enjoy!

Here's the last of it...


Aunt Grace Germany - I love these beer steins!
Aunt Grace Mexico - Tossed yellow sombreros and catcus


Aunt Grace Globe and Hawaii Fabric - the little blue dots that make up the clouds are sweet. Hula girls on a yellow background make the Hawaii fabric fun!

Bursting at the Seams...

I knew this day would come. The day when my allotted craft storage space would reach it's limits. It's at the point now where something needs to leave the space before I bring home just one more yard of fabric or that pattern I just can't live without (and will make someday)!

So I am trying to make some much needed room. My craft space runneth over and I made an initial sweep through the patterns found four I can let go of now. I decided to sell these in my Etsy shop dillee::dallee

I'm selling them for less than $2 each.

The first one is

Folk Art Rabbits Pattern by Debbie Mumm

That's all I have to blog about now...dinner duty calls. I'll post more about the goodies I'll be selling soon. This week I plan on listing some Amy Butler Temple Flowers yardage I've been hanging on to for years! Check out my shop in the mean time!