Quilted Chenille Pot Holders

Ever wonder what to do with ugly fabric that you inherited? I love making wonderful USEFUL gifts. These quilted chenille potholders are easy to make and can magically make ugly fabric beautiful!

The top of the potholder is six squares 9-inch squares of cotton fabric, a batting center, and a backing, usually of flannel or heavy twill. You will cut five of the top layers of fabric. It's amazing to me what you can put together and still have a nice finished project: here I mixed a print of cats, red peppers, vintage yellow and brown calicos, and a print of computer screens!

I layer the six squares of cotton fabric, right sides up. In the finished product, you will be able to see the colors in the print of the top fabric and you might be able to see colors of the bottom fabric. The middle four fabrics make up the chenille- you'll see flashes of color, but that's all. This is where you can hide ugly fabric! You put these six squares on top of the batting, and lay the heavy duty cotton or flannel on the bottom, wrong side up.

I pin the fabric, batting and backing together, then stitch a line of stitching corner to corner. I then do parallel lines of stitching about 1/2 inch apart. I find this is easier to do from the back of the potholder.

When the potholder is filled with parallel lines of stitching, I trim the holder square -- this time it was trimmed to just over 8 1/2 inches. I applied binding -- either double wide bias binding or left -ver quilt binding (I made that by cutting 1 7/8 inch strips and pressing them in half, wrong sides together).

Then you cut the top 5 layers of fabric between the lines of stitching. They sell special equipment to do this, but I just used a seam ripper. I made 10 potholders, and do not advise doing that many all at once!

Be careful not to cut the stitching lines where you bound the edges. Try not to cut the bottom layer of fabric, but don't panic if you do. I have a couple of potholders I've been using for daily for two years with a few stray cuts to the batting, and they work just fine.