Gingercake

Piped Pot Holders Tutorial

We have some picnics to go to this weekend and although I may make box brownies as my contribution, I decided to make handmade cute pot holders to go with my dish to give to the hostess.  This may be my summer staple since I had fun making these and they look really cute!

I love a nice potholder.  But my issues with doing a nice binding keep getting in my way!  I don't want to take the time to hand sew it and I can't seem to get a nice machine stitched binding.  It may look great on the front but messy on the back.  

On the other hand, piping and I are great friends.  I realized maybe my pot holders just needed piping instead of that traditional binding.  They turned out great!

Here is how you can make one too~

~You need to find a 8.5" circle to trace.  I used an embroidery hoop but a plate or whatever will work too.  9" is fine too and 8" is OK but getting a little small.

~cut 2 pieces of 100% cotton fabric (i used quilting weight) and 2 pieces of insulbrite- all 4 pieces need to be 8.5" round.

~ 30" of piping rope.  Mine is about 1/4" thick (or sometimes I just cheat and cover a store bought binding if I don't have any rope but the store bought is a little skinny for this project.)

~32" strip of 1.5" cordinating fabric cut on the bias

~ 6" strip of 1.5" fabric that is the same fabric as the circles.  This will be your loop.  Fold this piece in binding and iron flat.  It can be on the bias or just with the grain of the fabric.

~You will also need a sewing machine, scissors. pins, cordinating thread, an iron and ironing board.

Fold the 32" fabric strip over the 30" of piping rope.  Pin every 6".   Sew down along the strip to enclose the rope and make piping.  See the photo above.

Next, take one of your fabric circles, and sew the piping around the edge of the circles.  Have your rope facing in toward the middle of the circle.  I don't use pins here since I find it easier to sew a little, adjust, sew a little, adjust, etc.  But you can do whatever feels comfortable.  Sew along the line you made to enclose the rope in the last step.

Once you sew all the way around the circle, overlap the piping and sew through the layers.  See the picture above.  Trim off the excess piping and set this piece aside.

Take that 6" piece of binding and sew it closed.  This will be your loop to hang your pot holder.  

Cross the loop over and pin it to the top of the circle without the piping on it.  Layer the 2 circles of insulbrite beneath the circle of fabric.  Sew the loop on and trim the extra binding off to match the edge of the circles.  6" will give you enough length to make the loop small or a little longer.  See the picture above as reference.

Now pin together the 2 sides- one with the loop and 2 layers of insulbrite and the other with the piping sewn on.  Right sides of the fabric should be facing each other.  The side with the piping should be facing up.  The line of stitches you made to attach the piping will guide you to sew the 2 sides together.  This way, your piping will be perfectly even all around your pot holder.  See the above picture as your guide for how your project should look at this point.  There needs to be an openning of about 3" to turn the pot holder right sides out.  Backstitch at both edges of the opening.

Now trim all your seams down a little smaller than 1/4" except at the opening.  See the picture above.

Turn your piece right sides out through the opening.  Iron nice and flat and fold under the opening to match your edges.  See picture above.

At this point you have lots of options to finish up your pot holder.  You can just sew a seam around the edge to close up the opening and flatten the edges or you can do a little quilting design like I did.  I did this by marking the center and 4 even sections with pins.  Then I just free quilted some loops that crossed over each other to close up the opening.

That is some wonky quilting but it was fun!  With some practice and planning, you could make this part really pretty!  I did loops, circles, and ups and downs.  Lots of possibilites to have fun with your quilting designs!

Hostess gifts for the weekend complete!  I plan on making more for myself too and finally throw out those old ugly ones!  I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.  Please do not sell pot holders you make from this tutorial.  Contact me if you want to do them for a fundraiser or something like that.  If you do make one, I would love to see it in my Gingercake Tutorials Flickr group.  Thanks!!  

Have a happy holiday weekend!

 

 

 

Gifts and a Resurrected Project

Last week Cal finished preschool for the year.  We had performances and picnics.  I love preschool so much.  What's not totally adorable about 3 and 4 year olds singing (it's even adorable when they choose not to sing) the itsy bitsy spider?  Cal has 2 teachers.  His main teacher is my good friend Karen who has received so MANY of my handmade gifts that I decided to give her a gift card instead.  The assistant is new though and she asked Karen to tell me that she wanted something I made- that was really nice since I sometimes wonder if people would just prefer something from the store!

I bought several half yards of Sandi Henderson's secret garden when it came out in the fall.  I thought it was pretty but when it arrived I found it too girly for my personal tastes.  I kept trying to use it but have ended up just using it as gifts to people I know are more into this look than me.  It's lovely but I can't get excited about it for myself.  I find it a safe and sweet fabric to make teacher gifts though!

The assistant preschool teacher is very sweet and talks to me a bunch her love of Vera Bradley.  I hoped that she would like this quilted cover on the On the Go Organizer since it is kinda like Vera Bradley- right?  I just made simple loops which was fun and easy.

The interior is more Secret Garden and I used my favorite duck cloth for the pocket to give some extra weight.  This took me less than an hour to make! 

I also made my good friend Anna a 3 Layer Clutch for her birthday.  We have been friends since we were 13 and I have neglected her birthday for years since we got out of college and I moved away from Atlanta.  She is not really the Vera type so I went a little more funky on the fabric.

The fabric is Soul Blossoms from Amy Butler and I used vintage trim and onasburg for the flap.  Hopefully she has gotten her package by today and I am not ruining her surprise here!  

Back in march I ordered some beautiful Heather Ross fabric to make another more spring themed 3 layer clutch.  I made the clutch but ended up cutting the main outside piece too small.  I felt irrated and abandoned the clutch to work on my Bunny where I used up the rest of that adorable fabric.  After I finished up Anna's clutch, I looked at that abandoned one from March and felt newly inspired to start in with my seam ripper, make a whole new outside piece, rework the interior (since I had cut all that down to try to fix up the shortened outside piece) and finish up the clutch finally.

Somehow the flap turned out a little short but it worked out nicely since you can see the words on the Snow White fabric.

Then when you open the flap...

Pretty and whimsical but not cutesy.  Isn't that what Heather Ross is a genius at creating?   Then the wallet opens to look great too and you can see a bit of the 7 dwarfs.

I am so glad I took the time to rip out all those seams and replace those pieces!  My next few posts may be about my veggie garden so I wanted to make sure you got your fill of sewing projects with this one!  Hope you are having a wonderful spring and enjoying beautiful weather like we are!

Make it Work

When I made my tunic that I wrote about in the last post, I first made a quick version in thrifted fabric to make sure that it would fit and I would like how it looked on me before I cut into my nice fabric.  Last week I made this top for Anne without any trial runs and quickly regretted that hasty decision!  

Hopefully you are thinking- what is she talking about??  It looks fine!  And it did turn out fine but I had to think of Tim Gunn telling me "make it worrrk!"  since I made some silly errors at first.  I used the Dearmykids pattern that I used to make this shirt about 18 months ago.  I knew the size 4T wouldn't be big enough for Anne now so I enlarged the top piece and added more width to the bottom.  Well it turned out HUGE!  Like she wouldn't be able to wear this for about 3 years.  I should have printed out the correct pattern size and gone from there but I didn't want to bother with having to get new ink for my printer!  The pattern is awesome but it prints on like 20 sheets of paper.

This beautiful AMH voile does not like to be seam ripped.  Especially after you happily serged all the seams so proudly thinking you are making the cutest tunic for your daughter ever.  After I put it aside for a few days and felt bad about ruining this expensive fabric, I had the idea to add ruching to the arm pits.  Yeah!!  This was a great- although not perfect, solution since the top parts still gapes open on her a bit.

In the picture of the back above, you can see the ruching a bit better. It looks nice her and hopefully I'll post a picture of her in it later this spring/ summer.  Lessons learned: don't just wing it on expensive fabric AND if you ignore that first lesson, set it aside until you come up with a solution to fix up your errors of overconfidence!  Maybe someday you will make a shirt way to big for your child and remember this trick and it will be a help!  Do you have a fix it trick that has helped you out of a similar mistake?  I need all the help I can get :)

 

School House Tunic in AMH Voile

I can't imagine that other sewers have not made this easy tunic in this same fabric before but I am really happy with the result.  I bought the school house tunic from Amy awhile back when she first got it in her shop.  The pattern calls for 2.5 yards of fabric and in AMH voile that is not cheap!  I did notice the the voile comes in 54" width though and I was able to make do with only 2 yards AND I had to make the 14/16 since I have a growing chest and belly this summer.  HINT HINT!

 

The pattern was great and the fabric was wonderful- soft and beautiful with the prettiest drape.  Perfect for summer!  I think it was worth the $$$ since I'll wear this happily many times this summer and hopefully next year too!

Thank you to my lovely mom who gave me my beautiful LONG pearls for Christmas this year.  They are so elegant and I love how they really dress up this tunic into something special.

Crafternoon with Rachel and Michelle

Last week I took a break from sewing up skirts and dresses from KCWC and my 2 friends Rachel and Michelle came over for crafternoon (name creation from Michelle!).  Really, crafternoon was all about sewing since we were at my house and as you may know, sewing is kinda my thing.

Rachel, a beginner, brought over her brand new One yard wonders book (pretty cute book!) and we chose a simple purse for her to make.  No pictures yet since she has a little bit of hand sewing to complete the bag. Michelle has some sewing experience and we went through my scraps and she made a really cute bird pillow to match her other throw pillows on her couch.

Didn't she do a great job on the bird wing?  I love it.  Photo courtesy of Michelle.

I made pillows for myself based on the ones I saw on Country living cover this month.

They look easy enough, right?  I swear my brain had to bend every which way to coordinate the stripes correctly!  The other girls tried to help me and after cutting many incorrectly, I finally got it right!  Although my pillows make squares and the country living ones make crosses.  I really like how mine turned out and they give a more modern touch to my decorating.

After I got that one together, I realized I had cut enough incorrectly to make a 2nd pillow!!  Can you see how the center of the above pillow is dark and the one below is light?

Yep- making this pillow was all about that center match up.  It was a delightful treat to realize that all the scrapped pieces were not a waster after all!  Anyone else ever casually attempt to sew something and find out it it much more complicated than you thought?  Well I love the look of my new pillows and would never have treated myself to finally making them if it weren't for crafternoon with Rachel and Michelle! Thanks ladies!  Hope to do it again soon!

Easy Knit Dress- Last day of KCWC

I made this dress on Saturday morning.  It was FREEZING here!  I actually wore long underwear that afternoon to the girls soccer games and I was still cold!  So this summery dress seemed a bit out of place, but yesterday afternoon it warmed up enough to take a few good outside pictures.

I basically followed the warhol dress pattern from MADE.  Super dooper easy and a great way to build your confidence with knits.  Just use your iron, ball point needle and beginners can easily accomplish this.

I bought this fabric to make a skirt for myself.  It's from Joann's- in the back of the store red tag section.  Not much of a deal at about $9 a yard but it was the nicest knit I could find there.  The skirt for me may still happen but it will have to be a lot shorter now!

I knew my almost 8 year old would like the tie at the shoulder and it is a clever and easy way to finish the dress.  I think maybe I made it a bit too long- any thoughts about that?  She doesn't seem to mind and seems happy.  She did not like this fabric at all untilI I made it into a dress and then suddenly she decided it was pretty and she could wear it.  Sometimes we have to take risks to sew for our kids, right??

She had no serious modeling bones in her body for this photoshoot and that is why her face is cropped in the above pictures.  Here is one where you can see how she really was acting as her sister danced around like crazy behind me.  

A great FREE pattern to try if you want to attempt a cute summery knit dress!  

Tee Shirt Nightgowns- KCWC day 2

My Father in Law gave my husband a bag full of XL undershirts.  He said "just toss them if you don't need them!"  I wanted to pass them on to the goodwill but my husband wanted to keep them "just in case".  Hmmm.  A year later the bag was still untouched and I finally looked at them- nice quality lands end white undershirts surely could have some use, right?  I washed them and bleached them and finally dyed them tangerine orange and sunshine yellow.  Now, THAT was something I could use.  

Super soft peachy tee shirt material makes a pretty cute nightgown.  I used the existing hems for the sleeves and bottom hem and since I haven't tried to make necklines with knits (yet!), I made an easy peasant dress collar.  Finally,  I cut out a heart for some other scrap knit and zig zag stiched it on to give some extra cuteness.  I used my serger (thanks again Mom!) for the sewing up the sides.  This was a fast project!  Certainly under an hour.

We took these pictures this morning at about 7:30 AM.  Isn't the light pretty?  She slept in the nightgown last night and loved it.  Here is one last shot for you of the nightgown in jumping on the bed action.  My daughter wanted to make sure I included this one.  This is how all our photo shoots end these day with requests for "action shots".

More about how to take jumping pictures here.  Not the most exciting sewing project ever but I liked using some of the hand me down undershirts (and I have plenty more of this "fabric" now too!) and it was fun to experiment with using RIT and all that.  Have you been making clothes for your kids this week?  I am finding myself wanting to sew other things but I am trying to stay on task!

Gingham Dress : KCWC day 1

We'll see if I make it through the whole week but I did start off on the right foot!  I started Sunday since it was rainy and cold here and the kids wanted to watch Harry Potter again.  I couldn't pass up 2 unexpected hours to myslef- right?  When making this, I was inspired by this dress and this dress.  I love how you can make gingham and plaid prints play around when on the bias.

 I decided to build on an existing pattern that I had.  A simple peasant dress from ManiMina.  It turned out to be pretty blousy for Anne- 2 of her could have fit in the size 5!  So I did ruching around the waist (with 1/4" elastic) which made all the difference and was such an easy fix.

In order to use the fun diagonal pattern that is created by putting the gingham on the bias, I made bias tape binding for the sleeves and neckline.  I also made ties at the sleeves for an extra detail and the pockets on the bias too.  I used the extra neck bias tape as a loop for an oversized button in the back.

She put some leggings on after out pictures and I liked the outfit even better!  Looking forward to seeing her wear this all summer.  Are you doing Kids Clothing Week Challenge?   

Floor Pillow for the Reading Nook

The girls have a reading corner of their room.  My husband built them shelves and the light is wonderful.  The only problem was you had to sit on the floor to read!  There isn't room for a chair.  

Problem finally solved when I bought some new walk in the woods fabric from Amy's shop.  The prefect fabric for a floor pillow in the reading corner!

I have loved seeing the granny squares pattern floating around on Pinterest.  Especially the adorable and sweet ones by Jesse!  The original post about them can be found here.  I increased the block size to 5.5" to fill the 24" pillow.  

On the back I used a super soft high thread count cotton and again used Erin's method to put in the zipper.  I love that method!  Such a nice and professional touch.  The heart shape with the tag is my only delima.For now it is blank since I couldn't think what to put on there.  Do I embroider "love mom?"  Or elsie suggested I say "reading is fun!"  Or my name and the date?  Not sure for now.  Any suggestions would be welcome!

I actually bought 3 of these 24" pillow forms since they were on sale for only $9!!  So more to come eventually.  Hope you all are enjoying a lovely first day of spring.

Introducing the Modern Folksy Bunny PDF Sewing Pattern

Ya Hoo!  I wanted to have this finished with plenty of time for easter and now it is complete.  This is a fun and simple pattern- easy to finish in less than a couple hours.  The pattern includes plenty of pictures and full size pattern pieces.   Thank you to my nice blog commenters who helped me with the button eyes and making the ears bigger.  

Who wants to make some bunnies for easter???  As usual, for you my blog friends, you can get 25% off this week (until midnight March 20th, 2012) when you buy the new bunny pattern.  The discount code is bunnyluvin.