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!