Quick & Easy Handmade Christmas Gifts

I love Christ­mas!   It’s such a great time of the year and I so enjoy being able to spend time with our fam­ily and friends, but.… it sure is busy!   I seem to be run­ning from pil­lar to post at the moment and that got me think­ing about how I could make some hand­made gifts in a hurry.    I fig­ure I’m not the only one who is a bit time poor at this time of the year so over the couple of weeks I’ll be shar­ing tutori­als for some Quick & Easy Hand­made Gifts.  And the best bit, if your sew­ing cup­board looks any­thing like mine you will prob­ably have most of the items you need on hand.

The first pro­ject is this cute little oven mitt and tea tow­el set I made after see­ing these red tea/dish tow­els at my loc­al super­mar­ket for $2.00 each.      I made both sets shown here in under an hour which is much quick­er than the set I made back in July.    I’m not sure where these ones are going yet but I’m sure someone will claim them soon enough.

To make two sets you will need:

• 3 dish towels/tea towels
• ¹⁄₂ yard of back­ing fabric
• 1 fat quarter for the pock­ets (tree fabric)
• 1 fat quarter for the trim (stripe fabric)
• light­weight fus­ible fleece
• Insul-Bright Bat­ting
• Quilt bast­ing spray

Cut­ting:

• From the ¹⁄₂ yard of back­ing fab­ric cut 2 — 7 ¹⁄₂″ strips, sub­cut 2 — 7 ¹⁄₂″ x 27 ¹⁄₂″ strips & 2 — 6 ¹⁄₄″ x 7 ¹⁄₂″ rectangles.
• From the fat quarter of pock­et fab­ric cut 4 — 6 ¹⁄₄″ x 7 ¹⁄₂″ rectangles
• From the fat quarter of trim fab­ric cut  4 — 1 ¹⁄₂″ x 7 ¹⁄₂″ rectangles
• From the light­weight fus­ible fleece cut 2 — 6 ³⁄₄″ x 7 ¹⁄₂″ rectangles
• From the Insul-Bright cut 1 — 7 ¹⁄₂″ x 27 ¹⁄₄″ strip
• Cut 1 of the dish tow­els into 2 — 7 ¹⁄₂″ x 27 ¹⁄₂″ strips.   (Make sure you cut the hemmed edges off the dish towel).

1. Start by mak­ing the hand pock­ets.   The fab­ric I’ve used for the inside of the pock­ets is dif­fer­ent from the cut­ting instruc­tions provided.  The inside of the pock­ets you make will be made with back­ing fabric. 
2. Sew the 1 ¹⁄₂″ x 7 ¹⁄₂″ strips of trim fab­ric to the top of the 6 ¹⁄₄″ x 7 ¹⁄₂″ pock­et fab­ric to make the front pock­et pan­els using a ¹⁄₄″ seam allow­ance.   Repeat with the remain­ing 1 ¹⁄₂″ x 7 ¹⁄₂″ strips and 6 ¹⁄₄″ x 7 ¹⁄₂″ back­ing rect­angles to make the inside pock­et pan­els.  Press seams open.
3. Fol­low­ing the man­u­fac­tur­ers dir­ec­tions attach the light­weight fus­ible fleece to the wrong side of the front pock­et panels.
4. With right sides togeth­er sew 1 front pan­el and 1 back pan­el togeth­er along the top (trim) edge using a ¹⁄₄″ seam allow­ance.   Press seams open.
5. Fold in half with wrong sides togeth­er and press well.   Sew ¹⁄₈″ on both sides of the trim fab­ric. Press.
   
6. Attach the Insul-Bright bat­ting to the wrong side of the back­ing fab­ric.  The bat­ting should be ¹⁄₄″ short­er than the back­ing fab­ric, leave a gap at one end only (do not centre the bat­ting).     Pin the pock­ets in place at either end of the dish tow­el strip.  The front pan­el with light­weight fus­ible fleece attached should be facing up.
   
7. Flip the back­ing fab­ric over so that right sides are togeth­er on top of the dish towel/pocket strip.  Pin in place.
8. Using a ¹⁄₄″ seam allow­ance sew around the oven mitt start­ing and end­ing on the short side which has a gap between the Insul-Bright and the back­ing fab­ric with quilt bast­ing spray.   Back­stitch at the start and end.   Trim the corners and then turn right side out and give the oven mitt a good press then hand stitch the open­ing closed.
9. I used left over fab­ric to add a 3 ¹⁄₂″ strip to the front of the 2 remain­ing dish tow­els to make a coordin­at­ing set.   Noth­ing fancy I prom­ise — all I did was cut strips of the trim fab­ric and attached to the top and bot­tom of a piece of the back­ing fab­ric (4 ¹⁄₂″ fin­ished).   I then pressed a ¹⁄₂″ hem on all sides and attached it to the dish tow­el with a ¹⁄₈″ seam. Easy!

So what do you think?   Can you see your­self mak­ing a few sets for your friends or neigh­bours?  If you do I’d love to see them and if you tag me on social media I def­in­itely won’t miss them.

Later this week I’m hop­ing to have some quick journ­al cov­ers done and dus­ted, I’m using them as teach­er gifts this year, so will be back with a tutori­al for those real soon.

Thanks for stop­ping by,