Scrap-Fabric Potholders: Sew a Kitchen Set in Half an Hour

My little homemaker loves kitchen experiments 🙂. To make cooking more fun, we quickly sewed a set of potholders, using whatever was on hand, as always. Potholders made from fabric strips not only sew up quick and easy, but also look wonderfully spring-like, brightening up the interior.

Materials you'll need:

1. Fabric scraps with a natural fiber content for the top. You can use pretty much any fabric, even from old T-shirts, except synthetics, which don't work for contact with something hot.
2. Fabric for the bottom side of the potholder.
3. Insulation. You could even use quilted lining from an old jacket.
4. Colored knit binding tape.

How to sew potholders from fabric scraps

Cut our scraps into strips 5 cm wide. A rotary cutter is handy for this, but regular scissors will do the job easily too.

Arrange the strips in whatever order pleases the eye and stitch them together into a single piece. There's no need to finish the seams — just press them all to one side after sewing.

Mark the finished patchwork block into strips 5 cm wide and cut ACROSS. You'll get little colored squares like these — arrange them in the combination you like and stitch them together again.

The main part of the work is done. Now layer the bottom of the potholder (right side down), the insulation, and the patchwork block (right side up).

Trim it up, cut off the excess, and pin it together. All that's left is to finish the edges with ready-made binding tape, remembering to add a little loop at one of the corners.

Potholders like these hold up wonderfully, they're washable, and you can even sew a matching apron, oven mitt, and potholder set using the same technique.