An oven sleeve

Nope, that's not a cozy for an oven, I'm not sure a cozy for an oven is necessary, but what would I know, we haven't had an oven since April...  A work friend had her 30th birthday last month and I wanted to make her a present.  She always has burns on her hands from putting her hand in the oven to take out her toast, without an oven glove!  I told her off and she said that she does wear oven gloves when taking trays out the oven, but always burns her arm above the oven glove.  She showed me the evidence, it's a wonder that poor girl has any skin left!

Clearly, an oven glove was the idea present.  But an oven glove with a long cuff.  Mr CA decided this was an oven sleeve.

Whilst not exactly an oven sleeve, 100 pretty little projects had the perfect project - the Nifty Fifties Oven Mitt by June Cleaver.  

I pretty much followed the instructions, but wanting it to be longer I added an extra piece of linen between the patchwork strip and the gingham border at the bottom.  Unfortunately, when cutting the linen lining and the Insul-Brite oven-proof lining, I used the measurements in the book.  Duh.  I didn't have enough Insul-Brite to cut again so just added some strips at the bottom. This linen is home dec weight and was left over from my Weekender bag.

I really enjoyed quilting this.  I did an X in each patchwork piece and a line at the top and bottom, 3 straight lines in the gingham and wavy lines in the linen.  I couldn't remember for the life of me what foot to use for FMQ so used my walking foot.  I'm sure that's not right?  No idea why I didn't look it up, I had my laptop next to me as I was watching Numbers!

I used variegated blue thread in the gingham and blue patches and pink thread for everything else.

Here's the quilting from the back.  Whilst I'm not in the same league as a master quilter like Fiona, I don't think it's too bad.  There was a pattern in the book for the mitt, but you had to enlarge it by 300%.  That really annoys me.  I can't do it on my home scanner for some reason and I don't have access to a "copy shop", if I did, I'm pretty sure it'd be closed when I wasn't at work.  I ignored the pattern and used our (rather grimy looking it must be said) oven glove.

This is NOT our grimy oven glove.  

I was quite pleased with the binding.  It was sewn on the back first and folded to the front.  I wanted to machine stitch it and I could as I'd done those straight lines in the gingham, I managed to pin the binding down along one of those lines and I then knew where to stitch on the front to catch it.

The thumb is a bit odd.  Yes, I did snip a V-shape.

Not sure my hanging loop is long enough.

This is a shot of the back of the binding I was talking about earlier, I can't move the photos as it just puts them at the top.  Stupid Blogger.

I must say, I don't think much of the construction method.  This is the inside.  See that very frayey exposed seam?  As it's linen (and the pattern does call for linen) I'm not actually sure how long this is going to hold together.  I trimmed the Insul-Brite from the seam as I had to reduce some of the bulk somehow.

Oven gloves

Good morning ladies.  What do you think of my incredibly clever, well thought-out and witty title?

Any ideas what I might have to show you on this fine, sunny morning?  Yes, it's sunny, sort of.  OK, so it's not raining and that makes a big difference.  Not to what I'm going to show you, but to my general well-being and happiness. 

I think I told you that I'd done loads of sewing at the weekend, mainly sewing up stuff I'd cut out the weekend before?  Well one of those items was for my brother.  Last year, perhaps for Christmas?, I made him these oven gloves.  I used a layer of InsulBrite, wadding which protects against heat.  He loves them, but did complain that he sometimes got burnt wearing them so I thought it was about time I made him another set, using a double layer of InsulBrite this time. 

This was a pretty thrifty project as I used tea towels.  I have to admit that I bought the tea towels for this end, but you could use tea towels you already have.  If they've got a hole in them, or a stain, you could always appliqué over it.  As it was, I think this little bundle of 3 co-ordinating tea towels cost me £3.

 

There was one black waffle-weave tea towel, a white cotton one with a black print and a black cotton one with a white print.  I didn't think to take a "before" photo, but then it wouldn't have been that interesting anyway and I'm pretty sure you all know what a tea towel looks like, even three tew towels.  Mind you, I have just had a thought - are they called something else in other countries?  I'm trying to remember what I've seen bloggers in the US calling them and I can't remember.  It's a towel that you use to dry dishes, hence the name "tea towel".  Why on earth do we call them tea towels??  Anyway, I thought they went together pretty well.  Last time I used this pattern, but this time I just used the end-rounding template and made the rest of it up as I went along.

For a start, they're much longer.  I don't like my oven gloves to be too short or it restricts movement, and we all love to do arm stretching exercises whilst cooking...  I cut the two black tea towels in half lengthways, then sliced off a piece about 4" from each, I swapped these two pieces between the two patterns and sewed them in the middle of the two long pieces.  I used the other 2 slices for the binding of the top of the pockets.  I decided to quilt them as I have a pair made from the original tutorial and they're very... fluffy.  I'm not sure that's the right word, but I can't think of a better one! 

I even bound them!  Now you know me and binding don't get on, but I thought it would be the best bet with quilted oven gloves and it was actually pretty easy.  I used a piece of a black sheet for the binding and sewed it completely by machine.  I have just realised that I omitted the hanging hook, he'll have to hang them over the oven handle.

I quilted white on the white parts and black on the black parts, just a simple cross hatch.  I used my machine quilting needles that I bought when making my nephew's quilt (and completely forgot to use!) and managed to snap 2 of them!  My machine was making a VERY strange noise just before they snapped, not sure what's going on there, but I just put in another needle and kept sewing until it stopped making the noise.  I could be a machine repairer with my philosophy of "just keep sewing until it rights itself".  I noticed absolutely no difference between the quilting needles and standard needles.  Except that they seem to snap quite easily.

So there we go, oven gloves - done.  Now, in the spirit of this thrifty kind of project, I have a challenge for you.  I'm going to post more about it soon, but I wanted to find out if anyone would be interested.  If so, I'm wondering about doing a competition with a prize.  I have teamed up with UK fabric shop Abakhan to carry out a challenge myself and I was hoping I could persuade you to join in.  The idea is this, you take something you have lying around, I don't mean your huge fabric stashes, I mean some old clothes, an old duvet cover, something thrifted and use a maximum of £10 worth of new supplies to make it over, do it up or turn it into something completely new.    I'm envisioning a deadline of the end of May, giving everyone a month to get their projects done, probably with a linky party and a prize, but only if I can get enough interest.  So what do you think?  Would you join in?  Would you help me spread the word?   

Rule Britannia again!

OK, so do you want to hear about my new books, see what I've been making or hear about the new challenge I'm involved in?  Tell you what, you get all three.  Sort of a BOGOF with an extra OF. 

I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I'd broken my pact to not buy any new craft books, and bought 2 more.  Well I lied.  I've bought 4, but two of them were from the Hobbycraft sale and only cost a couple of quid so they don't really count!

Celtic Knots for Beaded Jewellery by Suzen Millodet.  This is a whole new jewellery technique for me using cord.

and

Beautiful Beading by Sarah Withers which has a section showing you how to make your own beads using various techniques - something I've been planning on doing for a while.

Then I joined in the Sewn!  Skill Builder QAL (week 3's block coming soon) and became addicted to quilting.  Although I'm pushed for time at the moment, making blocks is definitely in my future so I invested in two books.

200 Quilt Blocks to Mix and Match by Davina Thomas

and

501 Quilt blocks from Better Homes and Gardens.

I have only had time for the quickest flick through them and think I'd benefit from sitting down and reading them carefully.

So, on to the makes.  I was asked by a friend to make her a Union Jack cushion like mine but using duck egg blue.  Luckily I had a layer cake of Lilly and Will II which I'll be using for my table mats / chair cushions, but I thought I could spare a couple of squares.  So I had another go at a pinwheel:

Want to see the points?

Damn!  Still not quite there.  Not that it matters as it will be covered.  I decided to do the cross a bit differently as mine is quite bulky, so I attempted to piece the two halves, including the lace.  Well that was a 3 hour nightmare!  I got it finished eventually.

Look how sunny it was two Sundays ago!

I was enjoying sewing that day so decided it was about time I made some new oven gloves.  Ours are ripped, burnt, stained and falling apart at the seams.

I made these using 3 tea towels from a pack I got on sale at Asda.  I used a double layer of Insul Bright and as you can see, I didn't quilt them!

I deliberately alternated the direction of the stripes on the front as I couldn't decide which way to have them.  The tea towels weren't long enough to cut this out in one piece, so I used a strip of the contrast fabric in the middle.

I've been having a conversation with a fellow blogger about oven gloves.  This kind are the most common in England, I've never used or owned or even seen on sale a potholder of the kind I see blogged about everywhere!

And finally, I've just joined in with a new challenge over at Le Monde de Sucrette's Blog. There are now about 40 of us making a giant granny square.  Why? I have no idea!  I saw it posted on Bunny Mummy's blog and that was it, I had to join in.  Quite where I'm going to find the time I have no idea. 

The rainbow placemats are quilted and trimmed and probably, as you're reading this, the binding should be machined on one side (fingers crossed), that gives me a couple of days to slip stitch the back of the binding to be ready in time.  I'm also working on:

a seatbelt cosy to protect my neck in the car,
a rainbow crochet cushion,
an amigurumi rabbit,
and the Petite Ecole table runner

But what's the betting I'll be blogging about something else before I blog those projects??  I've also got to do my Skill Builder blocks this weekend, week 1 of 52 Crafts in 52 weeks (button on my sidebar) and get this giant granny going!  Oh, and I'm going to a wedding party on Sunday til Monday evening... I'd better get cracking!

Lovely toaster fabric!

When I asked my brother what he'd like as a present, he said he wanted some Cookies In A Jar.  I'd made each family member a jar last Christmas and they went down a storm.  I decided that that wasn't enough for a present, so decided to make him some oven gloves.

I used this pattern here.  I'd bought a small bundle of these Kitchen Metro (I think that's the name) fabrics, just fat 1/8s and immediately knew I wanted to use them.

(rubbish photos - sorry!)

There wasn't enough fabric to use it for the whole oven glove, so I decided to do stripes, using some red fabric I'd picked up in Ikea for £3 a metre!

I used two different fabrics for the front of the mitts.  The pattern is great, really easy to follow.

I'm wondering if I should have quilted them, my oven gloves are all quilted.  It was sewn wrong sides together and then turned, can you still quilt if you use this method?

We finally have a dining room table!  Expect to see table mats / table runner / table cloth / seat cushion projects coming soon!