Sew potholders to celebrate Julia Child

Sew a quick potholder to celebrate this weekend! Julia Child was born on August 15th. What better way to have fun this weekend than to sew something for the kitchen. My favorite quick project is a pair of potholders.

One of my favorite shops, Quilting by the Yard, is having a sale on kitchen novelty fabrics to celebrate Julia. They're having a Food Celebration Weekend. From August 2th through Sunday, August 15th they will be offering a 25% off sale on all wine or food theme fabrics. And every purchase gets an entry to win the book Julie and Julia!

I go through a lot of potholders during a year. Between constant washing and scorching they wear out quickly. And, these are so quick to make you’ll want some for every season. Use your scraps or buy some of the fun novelty fruit and vegetable prints that are in the quilt shops now. You can make one pair of potholders from a fat quarter, though you might need a little bit more for bias binding for both. Get two coordinating prints fat quarters and you will definitely have more than enough for these two potholders plus extra to trim towels, or appliqué a table runner to match.

Prewash your fabrics. This is one project that definitely benefits from pre-washing the fabrics. Potholders get such wear and tear in the kitchen and need to be washable.

• Cut four eight inch squares from the novelty fabric.
• Cut two four inch squares from batting fabric. (It should come as no surprise to my friends that I use wool as my batting in this project. Not only do I have a lot of wool in my stash, felted and otherwise, but wool is a natural heat resistant fabric. If it is felted it is already washed and shrunk. And, it is easy to needle through.)
• Cut two 1-7/8” x 34” or piece bias strips together to make this length for the binding.
• Assemble two sandwiches by layering novelty fabric wrong side up, batting, and novelty fabric wrong side down. You will have a sandwich with batting in the center and the right side of the novelty fabric facing you on both top and bottom.
• Quilt this sandwich. Here is a good place to have fun. Try out your new walking foot. Practice some motif you have been wanting to try. Outline quilt the design in the fabric. It’s such a small little quilt, just have fun.
• Make sure the completed square lays flat. Press them if necessary. Trim up to a square so that all the edges of all the layers match. The quilting process does take up to some extent. At this point your squares will not be perfect eight inch squares any longer. But it doesn’t matter. Just trim them up to a perfect square. Round the corners if you like. I use several old CD’s glued together to make a rotary cutting guide. Works great.
• Press the two strips of binding in half lengthwise and the fold in the edges to the inside center to make bias binding. Apply the binding all along the edges. I topstitch the binding for extra strength.

You’re done.

These are quick and easy to make.

Now you can get into the kitchen and make something from one of Julia’s cookbooks to celebrate her birthday this weekend!

Bon Appetit!