The Buckly Hot Pad

I don't have a quilted hot pad large enough for big casserole dishes, and the old rag-looped pad what I've been using is starting to shred, so I decided to turn this orphan patchwork I purchased from KnJ Studio into one:

I quilted the piece to the batting first with some ombre silver and white cotton Sulky thread. I wanted to add a double layer of Insul-Bright mylar batting to make it super heat-resistant, and hand-quilting through all those layers would have been basically impossible. I then stacked all the batting, added the backing fabric and bound it with some scrap binding leftover from the recycled linen quilt:

I also used a scrap piece from the quilt I made for Katherine last year to back it:

Getting all those layers through my heavy-duty Singer to attach the binding was a challenge, as the piece ended up being about 3/4" thick. I managed to sew it together, but in the process had a bit of buckling at one corner:

In hindsight I probably should have hand-sewed the binding on, or settled for just one layer of Insul-Bright, so lesson learned.

Comments

nightsmusic said…

I think you did the right thing with the thickness though. I have an antique tiger oak table. If cloth hot pads aren't thick enough, I end up with a haze because the heat from the pan releases any moisture the pad might have picked up from the air. I have taken to using things like that now as decoration and trivets when I have hot pans.

All that said, I like this! It's very fun and colorful :)

January 24, 2020 at 5:57 PM

Downsizing

This was my fabric stash once I sorted everything -- 22 full bins. I spent a day taking out and boxing up what I could part with, with the goal of trying to reduce it by half, so I'd have 11 bins. I was very strict with myself, and removed everything that for one reason or another I was sure I wouldn't be able to use. This is what I ended up with -- 12 bins of fabric that I'm keeping. It's not quite half, but close enough. Half of what I took out went to a local quilter friend, a school and Goodwill. These four tightly-packed bins will be going to the local quilting guild once I make arrangements with them for a drop-off place. I am relieved and a little sad and now determined to control my impulses to thrift more fabric. I don't want to do this again, so until I use up six bins, I can't for any reason bring any new fabric into the house.

In Progress

I promised myself I would show you the good, bad and ugly of my cleaning this year. This is what it looks like when you dump thirty years' worth of stashed fabric on the floor -- and oy, what a pain in the butt to pick up again! This is what it looks like after it's been sorted, folded and placed in containers, which took me about a week. Now the hard part is to downsize my stash by at least half, I think (that's my goal, anyway.) I've already e-mailed the president of the local quilting guild, a local friend who is a quilter, and a public school art teacher I know to see if I can donate some of the excess to them. The rest will go to Goodwill. Already I've reduced my vintage textiles from two bins to one, and my scraps from three bins to one. It's probably the hardest clean-out I've done, which is why I saved it until last. I know I have too much fabric, more than I can use in my lifetime -- but at the same time, I love it. So I have to

Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.

Valerean

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