Oven Mitt Tutorial

Whilst at my local Ikea I saw some pot holders in the Christmas section that were marked down. I was tempted to get some, but I'm a bit too accident prone to be able to use pot holders. I really need oven mitts if I don't want to get burnt! (This is still no guarantee, but let's not go there!) I keep promising myself that I will make some oven mitts to replace my worse-for-wear ones, but never quite get there. So my Bradley suggested that I get some pot holders "for now". I picked a pair up (they come in packs of two) and started to walk off. Then I had a brilliant idea about how I could turn the two pot holders into an oven mitt and grabbed another pair so that I would have a pair of oven mitts. So here's the idea.

Start with your two pot holders. You need to unpick some of the binding on one of the pot holders. I chose the pot holder with the tags on it, to get rid of them!

Unpick the binding along two sides almost to the corners. My pot holder had a hanging loop which I unpicked. It gave my binding some more length.

Then cut off the corner of the pot holder. (Note, if you are doing two oven mitts like I did make sure to measure the second cut off with the first cut off. I point this out only because I didn't and I used the quilted grid which was not the same on the second pot holder. All good though, cause I repaired the cut and tried again!)

Next sew the cut edge of the pot holder together. (Like my repair? This photo shows the second oven mitt.) This makes it easier to replace the binding later.

Sew the binding on one side and trim.

Then sew the binding across the cut piece. . .

. . . and around the next corner. Trim the end and fold the binding under and sew it to finish the binding end off.

Da da! The finished piece!

Place the finished piece on top of the other pot holder, pin and sew around the edges.

I sewed on the left side of the binding as shown here so that I wasn't sewing through too many thick layers.

Now you can put your hand in it!

The finished products! I'm off to bake!

Blog posts and Ikea (some of my favourite things!)

split 9 patch I was working on earlier in the year

This whole blogging thing is just so worth while. I am getting a little bit panicky about my handmade Christmas and thought I would check last year's blog to see how I went then. Yep. I'm all good still! And I discovered that I was sick this time last year too. So much for me thinking that was weird. Turns out it's completely par for the course! So now I feel just fine, thanks to the fact that I blogged this time last year.

Tape and things.

The Ikea trip was mostly for their flat pack gingerbread houses. We were running out, so needed a top up! (We are giving them as Christmas gifts to friends and neighbours here in Melbourne this year.) Of course, I did manage to pick up a couple of extra things. Red and white tape (spotty, checky and stripey!), red, white and green cards and red lights. I *love* red and white things! So much Christmas Ikea goodness. It's getting exciting!

August, and I'm a great aunt!

I am a great aunt! I thought that statement might sound boastful, but then I thought about my blog and decided that pretty much the whole thing is boastful (I like to think of it as sharing my good things!) so this statement would fit in pretty well here! Last week my niece had a little boy. He was four weeks early which was a bit of a surprise! He wasn't on my radar at all yet. He was early, but well thankfully! He is a darling little brother for my great niece, which means that I already was a great aunt!

1930's quilt

Being completely unprepared for his arrival I thought I might have to quickly whip up a quilt for him. Then I remembered this finish which I had no purpose for. Someone commented on my lack of purpose and said I should put it in the cupboard and wait for a baby who would need it. Thank you commenter, because that's what I did and now there is a Samuel who needs it. My Sophie (Miss 26) has knitted him a blue and white cotton cardigan and we will post them off tomorrow. My niece is a quilter, so she probably has already made a quilt for him, but extra rugs are always welcome for a newborn I think!

As for the August bit, phew! It still feels like May to me and I definitely haven't completed everything I had to do in July, but I'm working on it. My sewing has been pretty much non-existent for the last couple of months and my sewing desk had become piled high with all sorts of things, sewing related and not! Does that happen to your sewing area if it isn't used to it's fullest capacity? So this week I have been wading through it all and tidying and re-organising my sewing space. Finally I am beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. (Why do things have to get so much worse before they can get better?) Wednesday saw me make a trip to Ikea to buy a couple of shelves to put in some existing pax cupboards that just weren't working hard enough for me. It turned out that a trip to Ikea was just what I needed. I love Ikea and all the inspiration that is to be had there! (Let's face it. In my lounge/sewing room where I am sitting right now there are only two pieces of furniture that are not from Ikea, the piano and my purpose built sewing desk I got a couple of months ago.) Now that everything is almost organised the temptation to stop work and sew is very strong. Trying to resist! Must get finished!

New Furniture

Shay was a bit upset that I didn't post any photos of my great new furniture collected from Ikea's As Is last night. That's because we hadn't actually built the flatpacks. This morning we remedied that.

Mr 17 and some of  his helpers

The finished Varde drawers

Mr 17 was our chief builder, with my Bradley, Miss 15, and grandson and granddaughter as assistants. The kitchen in our new house is not small, but it is pretty old-fashioned with very few drawers. (Teeny tiny drawers! My cutlery doesn't even fit in a drawer!) I just love drawers in the kitchen so was pretty keen to get some drawers. I even had the space for them mapped out. I have been to Ikea several times to buy some drawers, but have come home empty-handed every time because these are really the best fit for my needs, and the worst fit for my bank account. Until last night that is.

White Liatorp round table

And the new table for our making/doing area. (You can see the old one in the background of the first photo. It's not really old, I bought it on February 29th. This was the table I really wanted, but couldn't afford. The "old" table is upstairs in the rumpus room now, waiting for someone to do some homework on it!) Of course, I don't have any chairs yet. (Any minute now...) I am lucky to have a houseful of professional furniture builders! They built, I sewed. Yes, more work on my drunkard's path pot holder, which has morphed into a table topper for my new Liatorp table. Not finished yet, but any minute now...

Sewing

Yes! I sewed today. Just one seam, but sewing is sewing! I sewed my first drunkard's path seam today, part of my Curve's Class homework.

Tonight I have been to Spotlight for solids for my final Curves Class project, Oodalolly. And to Ikea for hand towels. Yes, just hand towels. Which is why this is how we looked immediately before leaving the carpark.

The two things on the top of my wish list were in As Is tonight. And they were cheap. My Bradley thinks it must be my birthday. (It's not.) tomorrow I will be sewing more drunkard's path!

I'm pretty sure I don't even like okra!

I was really going to write a post last night, but the night got away from me! I guess it does when you spend an hour and a half talking to a daughter. It happens sometimes!

My Bradley and I popped in to Ikea last night to pick up another of these basket/drawer systems because I used the one we bought on Friday night in a different room! (May I just say here that auto correct thinks I mean "okra" every time I write "Ikea"! Auto correct has no clue! I have never even seen okra, let alone talked about it, whilst Ikea and I are like "Family"!) Today has been a lazy day. I have read a little and been to church, but not much else. I see this evening ending in much the same manner. Tune in tomorrow when I will have been incredibly productive! (I can dream!)

Tonight, on February 29

Ikea had a sale, to celebrate February 29th. (It doesn't come around that often you know. One of my friends here in Melbourne has a son celebrating his 11th birthday today. Well, he's 44 really.) I had already planned to buy a table at Ikea today and then they were having a sale! My table ($150 worth) was not on sale. However, one I had hankered after, but given up on, was on sale. It was $100 more than the planned table, but also $100 less than its usual price. So you see, I couldn't lose. I did spend $100 more than I planned, but I also saved $100 so I came out even. (Don't ask me to explain this again. It's gets all fuzzy the more I explain it!)

So I got a table AND I worked on the blouses some more. They are all finished except for buttons now. So tomorrow I will be sewing buttons!

A partly finished dress - blogtober

I seem to talk about long term projects here quite a bit. This is one you may not have thought of as a long term project. A tiny dress that I cut out in 2010 for a granddaughter, that I am sewing in 2011 for a different granddaughter. I started sewing it yesterday, and whilst there has been progress today, it's not finished yet. I am using a seersucker fabric. I love seersucker! So soft, so cool in the summer months. Anyway, my fairly ordinary amount of sewing achieved today was because I embarked on a bigger project. I decided to shift my living room around. Something I have been thinking of for a while. Bam! I was hit with inspiration today and decided that THIS was the moment! It's not quite finished yet, but hopefully that will happen tomorrow. The shuffle neccessitated a visit to Ikea (of course) to pick up a now urgently needed item. All I can say is thank goodness Ikea is open until 9pm every week night here in Melbourne! I took "before" photos this morning, so if it turns out beautifully tomorrow I will show you. If I don't post it you can assume another visit to Ikea is in order!

Ikea and thinking.

An Ikea room from the 2011 catalogue

I went to Ikea today. Since moving to Melbourne I haven't been as regular a visitor to Ikea as I was in Adelaide. Not sure why. Certainly I live much further away than our last house, (It's pretty hard to get closer than across the road!) but it's probably not further than the house before that. Some people assert that I have been to Ikea far too many times already and therefore extra visits are not only not required, but superfluous. This is possibly because they have been to my house. On admittance to my house some think they have somehow travelled through a wormhole into Ikea. Yes, some claim that it looks like an Ikea showroom. I like it. And I guess that proves that I like Ikea.

So today I went to Ikea. I had a list of items I needed and I was ready to spend! Unfortunately, most of the items were not there. (Despite my Bradley being told last week that the most important one would be there this week.) This is where the interesting thought I had today comes in. In Adelaide they have a system of placing a card on the shelf telling you when the out of stock item is expected in. Now I am sure they don't do this for every out of stock item, but I have seen it many times there. I thought, "If only they did that in Melbourne!" I decided to line up to enquire about my desired items, but gave up after 15 minutes of fruitless waiting. (I'm not very good at queueing, or waiting.) I had places to be you know. As I drove off I pondered on what a great store Adelaide is and how frustrating Melbourne's Ikea is. And then it dawned on me. All I was doing was championing the familiar. I think this is a thoroughly human trait and all the great advances in science and thinking that we have had have only come from people who were brave enough to step away from the familiar. For some of us the phrase "Familiarity breeds contempt" is incorrect and should read, "Familiarity makes us really comfy".

The moral of this story? We should all try to be as unprejudiced as possible and take each new experience on it's own terms, rather than comparing it to what may have happened before. Oh. And Melbourne Ikea should really put some notes up as to when out of stock items are expected in.

Yesterday's project.

My new favourite tool is our staple gun. I have been using it to attach fabric to the inside of our glass cupboard doors. I loved my Ikea Billys before, but now they are so much more beautiful!

So nice not to see the stuff in the cupboard! As you can see I haven't finished them yet. (Mr 16 doing the teenaged veg thing!)

Grandson hanging out with his uncle. He loves his boys! We had a great day with Mrs 25 and grandson and granddaughter yesterday. They are so much fun to hang out with.

Here is granddaughter in Miss 24's arms. She was pretty tired by this stage! So, a zombie but a really cute zombie! Hope your weekend was fun.

New bag!

There is lots of sewing and creating going on here at the moment. Christmas presents are being created every day. It's an interesting atmosphere. I think it encourages everyone to create. Miss 17 made this bag one day last week. Not sure if it was the creative atmosphere that encouraged her or not. Apparently she had seen a similar bag in a shop, but didn't want to pay that much money for it! The cute fabric is one from Ikea. Hope you are having a creative week too!

More happening in our house.

I finished Miss 10's Sunday dress in time for Sunday. Woo hoo! She wore it to church today. Hmm..... less successful on Mr 7's Sunday clothes. Oh well, there's always next week.


Miss 10 was out of her new dress and into her new nightie as soon as we got home from church! (today is kind of a jammie day for us!) I finished the nightie yesterday too.

I am 2/3 of the way through turning my bargain Ikea fabric into wardrobe curtains. As you can see from the photo below our wardrobe is a mess! We have 3 Ikea "coat racks" on the wall in our room with Malm drawers either side. We also have shoe racks (under the coat racks), mirrors and lights (all from Ikea). They form our "built-in" wardrobe. We always planned to put up curtains, but had to wait until we couldn't stand to look at for another moment. (of course)
This is the now not so messy look we were going for. I just love that fabric! We moved into this room not so long ago and we are still working on it. (Well maybe 6 months, doesn't time fly!!!)This one tiny portion of the room is how I want it to look. So, if I just face this corner and squint it's all good.
This week holds all kinds of possibilities. It's quite exciting standing on this side of Sunday with the week stretching out infront of me!

Saturday's WIPs

This is usually what I am doing on Saturday mornings. But not today! My kids play district basketball and Saturday used to be full of travelling and watching. This season they're all playing on different days, so I plan to sew today.


Trousers for Mr 7 from this fabric,

and curtains for my wardrobe from this Ikea bargain. ($2 a metre at their June sale.)
Hopefully there will be photos of something finished soon!

My week

I can't believe that it is Friday! This week has gone by so quickly. Well, I have achieved some things. Mr 13's room is finished and today we will move him in. I'll show you some photos when his furniture is in. I have also been to IKEA twice. Okay. I know it's an obsession. It's up there with fabric and patchwork shops in my life. Anyway, I have a good excuse for the two visits. I went to help two different people. I have also signed up to make a softie for Mirabel and Mike. Notice I said "signed up" and not "made". I don't often make softies, but it seems like a good cause so I thought I would help out.

This photo is another one taken at Melba's (the chocolate factory) on the weekend. Don't you just love trees? I do. I couldn't resist taking a photo of this beautiful fig tree. Fruit trees are one of my favourite types of trees. I also love tree shade. I remember being a small child when I realised that the shade from trees was "better" than other shade. It's cooler and more refreshing than man made shade. Living in a hot place I appreciate the quality of tree shade.
These jam labels are also from Melba's. I took this photo because I remember the jam label's from my breakfast table as a child. Growing up I was an avid reader and I spent a lot of time looking at labels because they had words on them.
This is Mr 7 on a comfy chair at Melba's. The chair was carved out of a piece of wood and he loved it! It fitted him perfectly! Back to the crafting grindstone!

A Busy Week

Isn't every week a busy week? This week saw some more of that renovation stuff happening. I painted doors this week. Twenty-three of them! The doors in the photo are some of the ten doors I am working on at the moment. I utilise an unfinished hallway to paint doors for the storage George builds me. I love the look of painted MDF and George loves to build with it, therefore I love to paint it! My colour is Wattyl Orchid. (Hey! It's lucky I haven't finished the hallway, huh? It was a plan!!! Really!!!)
This is another room in my unpainted house. We call this the "big couch room" at the moment. It is the original lounge room in our early 1950's timber frame house. Some previous occupants opened this room up and it is now a large room with living area, dining and kitchen incoporated together. We have a corner couch in this room from Ikea's "as is" department, hence the name - big couch room! George has built toy cupboards either side of a large window and window seats inbetween. He still has a little building work to finish (really) before I can paint. This week I sewed the first cushion covers for the window seat. I'm very pleased with them because I think they look like someone else made them! I guess I was nervous about doing this job because I have never sewn anything like this before, but they fit and everything! I am now working on the remaining four sets of cushions. I guess the fact that the texile part of the job is more advanced than the painting part tells you where my passion lies!!! Although I do really enjoy painting too.

The same cushions again! I don't know why I put this one in. Perhaps just to show you that it is a sunny window seat. It's going to be a great place to read on a sunny winter's day! The fabric is not my favourite, but a $3 a metre special from spotlight a couple of years ago. It's 1.5 m wide upholstry fabric and a great bargain. I knew I wanted a window seat somewhere in this house so I snapped the fabric up. George always says it's not a bargain until you actually use it, so I'm really pleased to be using it! Renovating on a budget! Such fun!

This photo shows off my cushion yet again (must change the title of this post to BORING! or Guiness World Record Attempt-to talk about a cushion for the longest time in a blog!) and is proof of our homeschooling status. For those of you who don't homeschool I will explain. We in the homeschooling community know that to be serious about homeschooling you need to have a seriously large lego collection. All the drawers under our 2.9m long window seat contain lego of some description. Okay, maybe it's just the geeky homeschoolers who have lots of lego, and if you are considering homeschooling please don't think the first thing you have to do is buy lots of lego. Not unless you are a geek, anyway.

For mother's day Picklestick sent me a fabric postcard. She sent one to all the mothers in her life. It's so cool to receive a fabric postcard! I was discussing the joys of it with her this week and she said "Well, I wouldn't know. No-one's ever sent me a fabric postcard!" I was crushed. Here was proof that I had neglected my parental responsibilities. Imagine a mother who had never sent her child a fabric postcard! So this week I resolved to right this wrong. I have made a stack of postcards and the first one is going off to Picklestick as we speak. You can see it above, along with the back of the one she sent to me.(On my Ikea bedspread. I love that fabric!) I'm off to sew more cushion covers, to save more money, and to right more wrongs! (This post feels so superhero at this end! Can you tell I haven't been well and feel a little outta touch with reality? Here I come, to save the day!!!!!)

Here fishy, fishy, fishy!

Picklestick and I have been having lots of fun this week! We are now felters. You're impressed, huh? Umm, I don't actually have any photographic evidence of this - but trust me! It's true. This is a fish pouch Picklestick and I made for one of Katie's friend's birthday this week. Don't you love the tail? That's just how the fabric was! I love fabric.
The zip opens to reveal some Ikea linen. I love fabric from Ikea! The fish is Picklestick's design and she's the one who insisted that if you open fish it has to be at the belly.(Her Bloke is a fisherman, so I guess she would know!) This is a softie picklestick made for the birthday present. We used the same fabric range for her clothes. We also made a bag out of this fabric range and linen, but there are no photos 'cause we're kind of last minuters!