Scrappy Hot Pad Tutorial

This is the start of a group of tutorials I want to post this fall that are all easy gift ideas. I like to give homemade whenever possible and thought I would share some of my ideas with you.


I went into my sewing room yesterday to clean up after the Fall Festival madness and got very sidetracked. I grabbed a pile of hand dyed fabric scraps left over from wrapping my soaps and had the pile over the trash when I realized they could still be used. I dyed up this bunch of fabric using some hunter orange fabric I got from one of my friends. I had almost 70 yards of the stuff and only needed to make one hunter jacket. So I dyed it. I have been finding uses for it for years. Now what is left of it is used to wrap my handmade soaps.

Supplies:
Fabric strips 1" to 2" wide - just whatever you have
2 pieces of cotton batting or tight poly batting slightly larger than the finished hot pad you want to make
Backing fabric
thread
Binding fabric

To start with I just randomly sewed together the strips I had. They were about 9 inches long.



Then I used my rotary cutter and squared it up.


I cut it to be 8 1/2" by 9 1/2". The size doesn't matter. That is just how big it could be to get it all square. I have large hands and like a large hot pad when cooking so I don't get burned. I also like larger hot pad for putting a hot pan on the table.

Next I layered my top, batting, and backing. I cut the backing last to make sure it was wider than the other two layers. I do this so that if the thing shifts while quilting it, I won't find that the back is now smaller than the front or off center by a fraction.
Then I pin the layers together

Next you bring it back to your sewing machine and quit it. YES YOU CAN QUILT IT TOO. I just did stitching back and forth. Since I am no good and a straight line, I did wavy. You can do all kinds of fancy things but this is the easiest.

When I have enough quilting in it for me, I stitch all around the edge to make sure it is secure.

Then I square it back up again.

This is what the back looks like.

Then I bind it.

Sorry I won't show you how I bound it because I am a binding spaz but I will direct you to some great binding tutorials I used.
Sandi Henderson's Bias Tutorial
Angry Chicken's Bias Tape tutorial (all on the machine)
Heather Bailey's How to Bind a Quilt Tutorial