Chenille Hot Pad, Day 6

Wow, this week just flew by!  I've been working on the hot pads daily, but haven't been able to update the blog about it, so today's post will have several days' activities on it.

The pattern used a layer cake (10-inch squares) for the hot pad, but since I'm using fat quarters (18"x22"), I decided to cut my squares into 9".  I cut up enough squares for five hot pads, plus a little extra, so I decided to experiment with the amounts of fabric and batting layers.  For one pad, I made the same number of layers as the pattern, one backing, the Insul-Bright, and four chenille layers, for a total of six layers.  For another pad, I had seven layers, the backing, Insul-Bright, and five chenille layers.  I added batting to the rest of the pads.  Here's the fabric breakdown of the hot pad experiment:

Hot Pad #1, Six Layers       > Backing, Insul-Bright, Four Chenille
Hot Pad #2, Seven Layers   > Backing, Insul-Bright, Five Chenille
Hot Pad #3, Seven Layers   > Backing, Insul-Bright, Batting, Four Chenille
Hot Pad #4, Eight Layers    > Backing, Insul-Bright, Batting, Five Chenille
Hot Pad #5, Eight Layers    > Backing, Batting, Insul-Bright, Batting, Four Chenille

I wonder if the chenille will look any different with the additional layers once they get run through the wash.  I also wonder if the batting will make any difference with how well the pads protect my hands when I take things out of the oven.  Hopefully they'll do better than the Mickey Mouse oven mitts I've been using.  And I use the term "Mickey Mouse" as both the noun and the adjective.  When we went to Disney World a few years back I picked up these oven mitts shaped like Mickey Mouse gloves as souvenirs.  They're really cute, but whenever I use them to pull things out of the oven, my hands end up looking and feeling as red as Minnie Mouse's bow tie.

I've read that some quilters will sew together their batting scraps and use them in their projects, and since I had some leftover batting, I decided to try it with the hot pads.  Some of the scraps were pretty small, so they made for an interesting assembly of batting.  Once I added them to the layers of fabric, though, you couldn't tell that it wasn't one piece of batting.

A Frankenstein monster of batting.

With the first hot pad I followed the pattern and quilted it from corner to corner.  I didn't like the way that it looked, though, and for some reason the lines curved slightly.  Maybe I wasn't controlling it enough?

 

You can't really tell unless you're looking for it, but even still, with the rest of the pads I quilted them straight across.  I was much happier with the results!  

Beautiful straight lines!

I'm just amazed at what that walking foot does for quilting!  It makes the project look so polished, even with so many layers!

Layers and layers of fabric!

It's crazy how much the quilting compresses the fabric.

After I quilted all five hot pads, I used the chenille cutter to cut through the top layers of fabric.  It was fun, but also messy.  There were strands of fabric sticking all over my clothes!

The next step will be to  bind them up, then wash 'em!