Stitchin’ For The Kitchen

Today, I was stitching up some new kitchen clothworks. I started sewing some scrappy cotton fabrics together to make some more drawstring food bags, quilted pot holders, and scrappy hot pads for the kitchen. Some of the food bags I make use vintage-era linens and I especially enjoy making those.

The quilted hot pads are a cross between a quilted pot holder and a quilted placemat and I use them on the kitchen counters.  There is no set size because I am working with cotton batting remnants and the batting pieces determine size.  I have found that the quilted hot pads are very useful when cooling cakes or pies, and I especially like putting one into service with hot jars of food on the kitchen counter. (I lift the bubbling jars out of the canning pot and set them on cooling racks for about 30 minutes, then allow them to completely cool on the quilted hot pads.)

I really enjoy stitchin’ for the kitchen because I’m making useful kitchen items and they are made with leftovers! I use up scraps of cotton fabrics, terrycloth toweling, and leftover cotton batting from quilts I have made. Stitching these kitchen items gives me the opportunity to be crafty and frugal while making something purposeful for our household.

I have written step-by-step tutorials for quilted pot holders which can be found on my Fiber Fantasies quilt blog. Would you care to join in and do some of your own stitchin’ for the kitchen ?

For more inspiration on sewing kitchen items, check the sidebar for a click-thru on the Kitchen Clothworks series I wrote.

Pillow Shams Made From Scraps

I finished a king size Nine Patch scrap quilt for our bed a few months ago. I quilted it on my Gammill longarm quilting machine — it measures 92″ x 110″.

I made the quilt large enough for the sides to drop half-way down. I also planned for the quilt to tuck under the bed pillows. But when I saw it on the bed, I thought about making matching pillow shams.

With yesterday’s rain, and more rain in our forecast, it’s a good time to work on this project. Yesterday, I pieced the blocks and stitched the fronts of each pillow sham.

The other one:

Today I will add a plain border around each patched section so that it fits the size of the bed pillows. Then I’ll be ready to machine quilt each pillow top. Once the pillow sham tops are quilted, I can add the back sections, envelope style, making it easy to pull bed pillows out of the shams.

Yard Sale Find

Last Saturday while driving home from some morning errands, my husband and I were lured to a yard sale at a nearby farm. We know the family, they not only run a working farm, but they have a professional slaughterhouse on the farm property. So, yes, this was a fun yard sale! Interesting things I expected to find. What I didn’t expect was to find was something that I have wanted for years: a bread box!

I have wanted to add a vintage-era bread box in our kitchen and had 2 styles in mind. I was absolutely thrilled to find one at this yard sale. And I paid only $3.