Dear friends,
I had so much fun taking homemade gifts to my friends at Christmas luncheons this year, and I want to tell you about it.
Last December I posted about making hot pads out of old jeans for presents.
You may want to go to this link for my tutorial as it seemed to be a hit.
This December, I also made hot pads for gifts. Twenty-one! And they cost me absolutely nothing but time. These were very easy since there is no bias tape around the edges, but more than that, they used up some of my stash of left-over material. I even finished emptying six spools of thread and some bobbins! How fun it was to put to good use what I thought my children would discover in the attic someday.
For this project you will definitely need a cutting board to cut five 8-inch squares for each hot pad, plus batting. I inherited a heavy flannel sheet blanket I used for batting, and cut three 8-inch squares for each one. (I’ve also used old sweat shirts in the past.) My math tells me that 8 X 21 is 168. Yes, I cut 168 squares during this busy season. My secret to this was to leave it all out, and cut a few here and there as I had a little time or needed a break from something else such as addressing Christmas cards. The cutting may have been time consuming, but the sewing couldn’t have been simpler. You just sew around the square and you are finished unless you want to top stitch after turning. I’m not going to do a tutorial, but give you the links below that I used.
The above hot pads are topstitched after turning. The tutorials I watched used four different fabrics for the top, but I couldn’t find four in my stash that were pleasing to the eye, so I stuck with two varieties.
These hot pads have no topstitching. I was very excited when I found a small box of leftover Christmas fabric!
The tutorial for the diagonal design: Cutting Corners by Riley Blake.
After learning the technique from the above tutorial, I checked out this one to learn how to fold my pieces for the square design: Criss-Cross Coasters.
Note the cutting is the same for both, but the folding is different. You can make the squares any size you wish. The square tutorial made them small for a coaster.
This is a partial pile of my 21 hot pads. I had a problem of “favorites” so when choosing for my friends, I had my husband do it! I’m going to put two in each of my four “girls” bag of goodies for Christmas and tell them that they can trade if they wish.
I’ve never given a present before that I had so much fun making, cost me nothing, and emptied out part of a space in the attic! I’ll even have three left over for my kitchen unless I run into someone else to give them to! Happy sewing!