Hanging Oven Mitt

I know it's common to give gifts of jewelry or perfume for Mother's Day, but these types of gifts are not my mother's style.  It's not that she isn't womanly, she's just not girly.  Growing up, we always defaulted to buying potted mums for her to put in her garden.  I'm much too far away to bring by potted flowers, but this year I had an idea for something I could make.  In the interest of full disclosure, I gave this gift to my mother for Christmas this year, and made another for my mother-in-law for Mother's Day.  

Over a year ago, my friend Alison left her awesome Orla Keily Oven Mitt at my house after Thanksgiving Dinner.  I returned it eventually (it may or may not have been 3 months later), but before I did I traced the shape so I could make my own.  I've had mine for about a year now, and it's one of my favourite kitchen things.  It looks cute hanging on my oven door, but mostly it's so convenient for pulling hot things out of the oven.  I've been known to burn myself often, but this mitt offers pretty full coverage, and has decreased the number of burns on my wrist (that and my pizza peel).  

In the past year I've seen a few tutorials for making this type of oven mitt, so I'm not going to reinvent the wheel on this one.   I used one layer of insulbrite (a heat resistant batting), and one single layer of cotton quilt batting.  You'll want to avoid using polyester batting on this one.  I like to quilt the main body because I think it looks nicer, but be warned that it's tricky to keep things looking tidy without a walking foot.  I don't have one, and I wish I did. 

I made this oven mitt with fabric all from my stash.  Everything is either a heavier cotton, or home decor weight.  I have been known to hoard thrifted fabric, and this was my first time to cut into the cute green, white and orange print.  I don't know anything about this fabric other than that it's a soft cotton and was made into a small table cloth.  I wish I had more of it, since I love the vintage Scandanavian feel of it.  The green and white striped bias tape was handmade from an Ikea print (sadly I think they've stopped making the striped prints).  For this project I like my bias tape to be all cotton (the packaged stuff is usually 50/50), and about 1 3/4" wide.  This is the perfect width to sew the first side at 3/8" and gives you lots of space to sew the other side down by machine.

Sometimes I like to sew down the second side of my bias binding by hand, because I love how neat it looks,  but it's much faster by machine.  Even when you take into account having to go back over the spots that didn't get caught the first time, it's still faster with my machine.  My gut reaction is to avoid showing you the stitches that aren't perfect, but I was reading a post yesterday about how it can be intimidating for new sewers to see only perfect projects on blogs.  So here are my stitches in all their imperfect glory.

The pockets are lined with some awesome orange textured fabric.

When it's all said and done, this is a really simple project, and a great addition to anyone's kitchen.  I made this one all in an evening, and if you were making multiples, it would be faster for each one.  I'm sure your mother (and mother-in-law) would love one!