Not burning my hands off (I hope)

Our oven mitts are in pretty sad shape, which is extra unfortunate because I use big cast iron skillets a lot, and those babies can heat through a sub-par oven mitt like nobody's business.

It had been more than a month since I did any sewing. Lack of time plus the messiest sewing room ever were keeping me from feeling inspired. But I decided an oven mitt (small! easy! plus we really, really need it!) would be a good project to break the no-sew streak with.

the quilted-with-straight-lines side

I've made hot pads before, but they were, in all honesty, kind of wimpy. Not the sort of thing that can stand up to carrying a hot cast iron skillet across the kitchen. But for the oven mitt, I was wielding a new secret weapon: Insul-bright! I read about this stuff somewhere years ago and had picked up a package sometime last year. It was finally time to break it out and protect my hands from burnage.

the fun quilted-all-crazy-like side

I used the pattern from Simple Sewing, but I didn't follow the instructions for assembly because I didn't want all those zig-zagged edges free on the inside of the mitt. So I quilted the outer fabric, the Insul-bright, and the batting together. Then I placed my two quilted pieces together with right sides facing and sewed them together. Then I turned that part right-side out. I cut my lining fabric pieces with extra length at the wrist opening end (about two inches). Then I sewed them together. Then I just tucked the lining up into the outer mitt and folded the extra fabric up of the lining up over the raw edge of the outer mitt and hand-stitched it down, so all the edges inside and out are completely finished.

action shot! woohoo! please try to ignore the dirty oven

So far, so good. But it has only been tested against cookie sheets so far. I'll let you know how it holds up with the hot cast iron.